Category Archives: Single Parenting

running, working, family-ing

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I registered for a half-marathon. I’m kind of back and forth between super-excited and also completely terrified, because I have literally never done any kind of official race at all. Like, not even a 5K. And it’s not even about trying to compete with other people for me, because I know I’m an “average at best and actually pretty slow” runner. It’s more that I just want to prove to myself that I can do it — that I am capable of running 13.1 miles — if that makes sense.

The Betty Rocker workout challenge in October definitely helped boost me a lot, and I’m still using her workouts a couple days a week for strength training. I’ve also lost about 6 pounds since October 1st, which wasn’t something I was actively working on, but you won’t hear me complain about it.

In related news: all of my disposable income is now being spent at sporting goods stores (I need workout clothes so I can run through the winter months), which is further proof of how we change as we get older, and how 20-something me wouldn’t even recognize 38 year-old me.

(Oh, the race is next spring, after my birthday. So I’ll be 39 when I run my first half-marathon. That’s… probably not something normal people do, I’m guessing.)

I will try not to talk about it too much because blah blah blah nobody cares about my workout regimen. But it’s kind of A Big Thing that’s on my mind right now.

no1currr
(Added because it’s one of my favorite GIFs of all time.)

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I don’t talk about it much here, but my job has been so good lately. I changed managers a few months ago, when my manager moved to a different team (I can’t remember if I ever blogged about that or not). I was initially really nervous about it, because my new manager is a guy that I’ve worked with for the entire four years that I’ve been at this company, but I could never figure out whether or not he liked me. But the transition has been very easy, and we have a really great working relationship now.

Last month, I had my first performance review since changing managers, and I got some really great feedback, as well as a raise. I feel like I’m insanely fortunate to have a job that I enjoy, and get to work with people I really like.

Work has also gotten a lot busier recently, which is part of the reason the blog has been so quiet lately. But it’s all good stuff there.

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Oh, and I got more pictures back from our family picture day, and I just… my god, I don’t know how I got so lucky to have these two beautiful little girls.

girls_serious_faces

They’re so different, and so much alike. They are each their own individual little people, and they are delightful.

The other day, I thought about how when I was pregnant with Catie, and we first found out she was a girl, I was terrified, because I didn’t know if I’d be a good mom for a girl. I’m not a super girly-girl type, and I have so many body image issues of my own that I was afraid I’d project onto a little girl, and I just thought I’d be terrible at it.

(Funny thing: it was the opposite when I was pregnant with Lucy. By that point, I was scared of having a boy, because having a girl was all I knew. That time, I was relieved to find out we were having another girl. I was like, “oh, another one of these? Ok yeah, I got this.”)

I think Catie and Lucy are proof that we get the kids we’re supposed to have. Because they’ve expanded my horizons and my worldview so much, and the fact that I can now have extensive conversations about both dinosaur fossils and Disney princesses without batting an eye? I think that just makes me a more well-rounded person than I was before I had kids.

me and my girls

Oh, this guy of mine is pretty great, too.

me and Chris

(Side note: that picture was so awkward to take — “look over our shoulders at each other, say what now?” — but I really love the way it turned out.)

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to reading online reviews of running shoes, because apparently that’s the type of thing I do with my free time now. Yeah, I’m a weirdo. I know.

state fair recap

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This past weekend, I borrowed my mom’s minivan, loaded up my kids, Chris, and his kids, and all 6 of us set off for the state fair.

(Here’s where I admit that I am a suburban mom cliche, because I want a minivan SO BAD. I mean, I love my Subaru, and I’ve had it for 13 years now. But a minivan has so much room! The doors that slide open with the touch of a button! I want one. And I don’t care if that makes me middle-aged and lame.)

When we went to the state fair last year, we found out Lucy was too little to go on any of the rides. Even the baby rides required kids to be at least 36″ tall, and she wasn’t. So, this year, we had talked it up a lot, about how now that she’s a big girl, she can go on the rides! (I don’t think she remembers the incident last year where she was sobbing and pleading to go on the rides with Catie, but boy, I sure do.)

The first ride we hit were the kiddie motorcycles. As soon as it started, Lucy’s face just lit up.

Lucy's face on her first ride at the state fair. Pure joy.

I don’t think I have ever seen joy like that. As soon as it stopped, she yelled, “AGAIN!!!” I had to coax her off with a, “hey, let’s go see what other rides they have, ok?”

Chris and I took a divide-and-conquer approach to the fair. His kids wanted to go on the scarier rides that are meant for big kids, which Catie won’t go near, and Lucy isn’t tall enough to go on. So we’d make our game plan, like, “Ok, we’ll text each other at X o’clock to see where we are, and meet up for food then.” And it worked out really well – all 4 kids got to do all the stuff at the state fair that they wanted to do.

Race cars!

It’s funny that Catie is almost too big to go on the kiddie rides, but she’s my cautious girl, and she doesn’t want to go on anything that goes up in the air or spins her around too fast. This year, the big breakthrough was that I finally got her to try a fun house. She was convinced that it would be scary – I explained that it’s not the same as a haunted house, and nothing is going to jump out at her. And after a LONG time of arguing about it, she finally went in, and she loved it.

Sometimes it’s frustrating that she won’t try new things, but then I remind myself that I’m going to have to pay her car insurance someday, so it’s really ok that she’s so careful.

Lucy & Chris's son on the hot air balloon ride.

And for some of the more adventurous kiddie rides (like the hot air balloons that lift the kids several feet in the air & spin them around), Chris’s son was really sweet about going with Lucy on them, so she wouldn’t have to go by herself.

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One weird thing toward the end of the fair visit: Chris’s daughter had been having a blast, and had been bugging us to go on one more ride, and asking if we could just stay a little longer. You know, normal stuff for a kid who’s having a good time – they don’t want to pack up and go home.

Chris’s kids were supposed to meet up with their mom that night for some party, but the details were never finalized, and Chris didn’t think much about it. Once his daughter realized what time it was, and that she was late to meet up with her mom, she FREAKED OUT. She was going a mile a minute, trying to rush us out (you can only move so fast in a crowd of thousands of people), and asking Chris if she could call her mom. (He said she could call her when we got somewhere quiet. Which I thought was logical, because it doesn’t really make much sense to hand a 10 year-old a cell phone in the middle of a mob.)

It was weird how quick she started backtracking her story of the day, too. “I didn’t even have any fun at the fair! You made me go on baby rides all day!” Which, uh, no. She went on maybe 2 kid rides, both times because she asked to go on them. And she was having fun right up until the minute she realized she was late. It was like she was trying to rewrite the narrative out loud, so she could make sure she wouldn’t be in trouble with her mom later.

Once Chris promised her that it was ok because her mom would only be mad at him, not at her, she calmed down. We all went back to my house, the kids had pizza and watched a movie, and they played with Spyro Jones. They were fine, and it all ended well. It was just really upsetting to see how obviously terrified she is of her own mother’s anger. His kids are so sweet, and I really worry about them a lot.

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As for my kids, they were running on a sugar high until late on Saturday night. Lucy had missed her nap completely because of the trip to the fair, and she finally crashed sometime after 10 p.m. Catie was out a few minutes later.

What happens to a 3 year-old who misses her nap & spends 7 hours at the state fair.

Until next year, sweet dreams of funnel cake and cotton candy.

the picky eater

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My kids are living proof that you can do the exact same thing with both kids, and whether a child is a “good eater” or a “picky eater” is a total crapshoot. I did nothing different between my two girls. Lucy will eat pretty much whatever I put in front of her. Meanwhile, if left to her own devices, Catie would prefer to live on nothing but fruit and empty carbs.

Here’s just a few things Catie won’t eat/drink:

  • Cheese – melted on pizza is fine, otherwise no.
  • Nuts in every form – not even peanut butter.
  • Any red meat that is not ground beef.
  • Almost all fish, unless it’s fried.
  • Bacon (!)
  • Milkshakes (!!)
  • Chocolate milk – she will drink ONLY regular milk, nothing added to it. Chris once offered her a Yoo-Hoo and she looked at him like he had 3 heads.
  • Yogurt/cream cheese/pudding/Jell-O/anything that falls into a “gooey texture” category.
  • Jelly/jam on anything.
  • Sandwiches. Yes, really.

I hear some parents (and “parenting experts”) argue that you should never prepare different food for your child, they should eat what you eat, and if they refuse, they should just go hungry. And that if a kid refuses something at one meal, it’s re-offered at the next meal, and the next, until they concede and eat it.

I would like to invite any of those parents to spend a week with Catie. She will go hungry until her blood sugar bottoms out, and then she turns into some sort of Demon Child, and you know what? It’s NOT WORTH IT.

So yeah, I am the mom who makes alternate meals. We’re going to have steak for dinner? Catie doesn’t eat steak, I’ll make her some fish sticks. Or: oh, I was going to roast some asparagus as our vegetable, but she hates that, so I’ll heat up a can of green beans for her. It takes maybe a couple of minutes of extra planning, and it saves me hours of whining and tears. I’m ok with the trade-off.

As a general rule, I think our society is too obsessed with food, to the point where people use their diet as part of their self-identity. Vegetarian, gluten-free, whatever. There is more to you as a human being than what foods you do or do not choose to shove in your mouth.

So I don’t think the big food battles are worth it. We’ve found enough compromises of things that Catie will eat, and she more-or-less gets a balanced diet, so I don’t stress about it that much.

Except! When it comes to school lunches.

I’ve blogged about this once before, over a year ago, and some of you guys had really great suggestions and comments about options to try. And I’ve tried a lot of your ideas. For one reason or another, they’ve all failed for Catie.

Dave and I have texted about this a lot, now that the kids go back and forth between our houses. We’re both frustrated with Catie bringing home most of her lunch uneaten, and wasting so much money on food she doesn’t touch.

At some point, she told Dave that she hates all sandwiches except for chicken sandwiches, “like the kind at Chick-Fil-A.” We went back and forth about this for a while, and decided ok, let’s go with that. We each stocked up on buns and frozen chicken patties. Every morning, heat up the chicken patty in the microwave, put NOTHING on the bun (Catie is staunchly anti-condiments), wrap the sandwich in foil, then put that inside an insulated sandwich bag so it stays warm.

And for a few weeks, it worked. I’m not sure if she got bored with it or if she decided that she doesn’t like chicken sandwiches all that much after all, but lately the chicken sandwich has also come home uneaten. She eats everything else in her lunchbox (2 types of fruit, crackers, some type of treat – usually a York peppermint patty or something), but not the sandwich. She’ll take maybe two bites of the sandwich SHE SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED.

(A couple of friends said that if their kids do this, they’re given the food they didn’t eat as their after-school snack or dinner. I don’t think I can pull that off, since Catie goes to daycare after school, and I don’t pick the girls up until 6:00, by which point I already have dinner planned. I usually don’t think to even check her lunchbox until long after dinner.)

Yesterday she didn’t even take a single bite out of her sandwich, and when I got mad, she said, “It wasn’t my fault! My friend [kid’s name] distracted me and I forgot!” Right. Ok.

When I try to get her to talk about what type of food she DOES want in her lunchbox, she gets angry, defensive, and accuses me of “making her nervous.”

After her one of her rants about how she hates sandwiches, I asked her, “What do the kids who sit by you bring in their lunchboxes?” She said all of them buy lunch at school instead of bringing them.

I said, “Well, why don’t you try buying your lunch then?” (Note: she bought her lunch one time, when she was in kindergarten.)

She said, “No, I did that once, and they gave me food I hated.”

“What food was that?”

“CHEESE!” *big eyes as if I should recoil in horror at the thought that someone dared to put a piece of string cheese on her plate*

But, you know, after all of these arguments, and all of the wasted food and money, I’m just done. And so is Dave. So she’s buying her lunch next week as a punishment for not eating her packed lunch.

I figure we’ll have one of two outcomes:
1) She’ll realize that she has it pretty good with her custom-made-for-her-picky-taste-buds lunchbox, or
2) She’ll decide that school lunches are awesome, and we can stop fighting about it.

Either way feels like a win.

Wish me luck.

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Meanwhile, this morning I asked Lucy what she wanted for breakfast, and she said, “BROCCOLI!”

Hey Lucy, what do you want for breakfast? "Broccoli!" I couldn't think of a reason to say no. So ok, weirdo, broccoli it is. (Big sister on the iPad photobomb.)

Aside from the fact that it’s not a traditional breakfast food, I couldn’t think of any reason to say no. So ok, strange little girl, here’s your broccoli. She ate two bowls of it.

I don’t even know. Kids are so weird.

Girl Scout for a day

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Like all siblings, Catie sometimes gets jealous of Lucy. She says that I pay more attention to Lucy, and that I don’t take care of her like I do with Lucy. I’ve tried to explain that any difference in how I treat them is because Lucy is younger and needs more from me – Lucy can’t open the fridge by herself like Catie can, Lucy can’t wipe her own butt like Catie can, that kind of thing – and I try to reassure her that I did all of those same things for Catie when she was 3. And also, someday when Lucy is 7, she’ll do all the stuff that Catie does now.

I don’t know how much it helps to tell her that, but lately, I’ve been trying to make sure that Catie and I get more one-on-one time. We’ll drop Lucy with my parents for a while and do something, just the two of us.

To be fair, I also try to make sure I get one-on-one time with Lucy, but since she’s so much younger, Lucy thinks that getting to go to the grocery store with me – “just me! No Catie!” – is a big huge treat. We get the cart with the attached car, she hops out to get things off the shelves for me (well, the lower shelves), and she thinks she is hot stuff as the only child. She chats my ear off through the whole store, and we have a blast. Meanwhile, Catie hates grocery shopping, so she’s more than happy to hang out on my parents’ couch and read books aloud to my dad while Lucy and I go to Food Lion.

When it’s “Catie and Mommy Time,” we do things like go roller skating (someplace I’d never take Lucy, because I’d be afraid the big kids would mow her down), or go to a Pokemon tournament, or whatever she wants to do.

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One of Catie’s friends from school is involved in Girl Scouts. Back in April or May, they had a nature hike where each girl was allowed to bring along a friend. She invited Catie, and Catie loved it. She came back asking if she could join Girl Scouts.

This was so out of character for her – my cautious child who never wants to try anything new, suddenly wants to join Girl Scouts? I was so thrown off by her enthusiasm, but happy that she wanted to try it out, that I said yes, of course.

Disclaimer: I was never in the Girl Scouts. I know next to nothing about Girl Scouts, aside from the fact that they sell very delicious cookies.

The Girl Scouts’ calendar follows along with the traditional school calendar, so there was no point in signing her up in May, when they were about to end for the summer. I enrolled her for the 2014-15 year, and the first meeting was this past Monday.

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In the few months since the nature hike, Catie changed her mind back and forth a couple of times about Girl Scouts. She wanted to go, then she didn’t.

Finally, I said to her, “Look, we’ll go to the first meeting, and see how it goes. If you don’t like it, we don’t have to go again. If you go a few times and then decide you don’t like it, you can stop. There’s no rule that you’re going to stuck with this for life, ok?”

Since I had given her an easy out, she agreed.

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Here’s how that whole troop meeting thing went down:

The meeting started at 6:00. At 5:15, I picked up the girls from daycare. I dropped Lucy off with my parents, and Catie and I set off for a Baptist church on the far side of town, where the troop meeting was being held.

During the meeting, the troop leader talked the parents through the troop handbook, while the girls sat around a table and did some sort of “getting to know each other” exercises.

The meeting wrapped up a little after 7:30 (an hour and a half of talking about Girl Scout policies and my eyes were starting to glaze over), then we rushed back to my parents’ house. My mom had food waiting for us, and God bless her for that, because Catie and I were both starving.

By the time we got home, it was 8:30, then I had to get the kids bathed and ready for bed, and they were so hyper that it took another hour to get them settled down to sleep.

It was exhausting. And the kicker? We hadn’t even walked out of the church meeting room before Catie whispered to me, “You said that I wouldn’t have to go back if I hated it? And I hated it.”

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When I was talking about Girl Scouts with the mom of Catie’s friend, she said that there was one troop meeting a month, and then you just pick and choose various events that your kid wants to attend. That sounds easy enough, right?

It turns out there are THREE troop meetings a month, and attendance is mandatory at all of them. And it’s a lot more expensive than I thought it was. And all of the fundraising sales (cookies, yes, but they also sell other stuff in the fall) require participation as well.

It was really the required troop meetings that got me. I was so overwhelmed on Monday night, and the thought of doing that kind of crazy rushed evening, 3 out of 4 Monday nights every month? I don’t think I can do that.

So, honestly, I was a little relieved when Catie said that she hated it. I mean, I get that the Girl Scouts are a good organization, and it could potentially provide her with all kinds of opportunities later in life, but I also don’t think it’s mandatory.

I emailed Catie’s troop leader with a note that basically said, “thanks, but this isn’t going to work for us.” My understanding is that our county has girls on a waitlist to join Girl Scout troops, so hopefully this will provide an opportunity for one of them, who might be a better fit for Girl Scouts than us.

Also? It means that I won’t be sitting at a folding table in front of a grocery store in February trying to sell cookies with my kid. And I’m pretty ok with that.

mommy’s weekends

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Dave and I alternate weekends with the kids. Having the free time has been nice (and every other weekend when the kids are with him? I sleep as late as I want and it is GLORIOUS), but it’s also been hard for me to adjust to not having the girls with me as much.

I try to make sure we always do something fun for them on my weekends. Two weekends ago, we went to the beach. Before that, it was 4th of July weekend and we hung out with family and went swimming.

This past Saturday night, we went to see The Little Mermaid onstage. Chris’s cousin works at the theater downtown where they were showing it, so she got us early, discounted tickets.

About to go see The Little Mermaid on stage with my girls.
Before the show. Also? Hey, 2 inches of roots. Time to get my highlights re-done, obviously.

Chris had his kids that night, so we all went together, which was a little crazy with 4 kids all going in different directions. But the kids get along really well together, and the show was just fantastic.

Oddly enough, Lucy – the child who was the most excited about going to see the show (because she is a huge fan of anything that involves princesses) – was the one who had the hardest time watching it. She was a wiggle-worm and wanted to sit on Chris’s lap, then on my lap, then back on Chris’s lap… never in her own actual seat, of course. I mean, she’s only 3. The older kids have the attention span to sit still and watch the show, at least more than she does. But she wasn’t the only kid who was squirmy and moving around a lot, so I didn’t worry about it too much. She was quiet, at least.

The show started at 7:30, and didn’t end until 10:00 p.m. It was way past the kids’ bedtimes, but we figured hey, we’re already out this late, and Krispy Kreme’s flagship store downtown was just a few blocks away…

I mean, really. If you're downtown long past bedtime anyway, you might as well.

She insisted on a pink donut. To match her dress. And her manicure.

Both Catie and Lucy fell asleep in the car on the way home. I carried Lucy in, took off her shoes, and put her in the bed, fancy tutu dress and all. Catie woke up enough to walk in the house, change out of her jeans and into her PJ shorts, then she crawled into the bed and crashed. Both kids slept until 9 the next morning, which is basically unheard of.

Well, actually, scratch that – Lucy woke up at 5 a.m. and came into my room crying, “I don’t wanna wear this!!” about her fancy dress. I guess she was confused when she woke up, poor kid. I changed her into her PJs and put her back in the bed, and she was out.

(I also stripped the beds and washed the sheets on Sunday, because the kids had been pretty filthy when they went to bed, and we were due for a laundry day anyway.)

On Sunday, we dropped Lucy with my parents for a while (getting the grandparents all to herself is pretty much Lucy’s Most Favorite Thing Ever), and Chris and I took Catie to a game store that was hosting a Pokemon tournament. She’s been into Pokemon for a while, but she doesn’t really know how to play the card game. My parents gave her some money to buy some more cards (she already had some, but not enough to make a deck that you can play the game with – don’t ask me, I don’t really get how this works). We met some really sweet kids there who were willing to play with her and help teach her the rules, and she had a blast.

Funny aside: there was a little girl there named Katie, who was maybe 11 or 12 years old. She had purple glasses, long blonde hair, braces, wearing sneakers and a Pikachu t-shirt… It just kind of hit me that this was probably my Catie’s future. Which is fine, because the girl was so sweet (albeit in the awkward pre-teen years), it just struck me that, yeah, I can totally see Catie being just like that in a few years.

Catie learned a lot about how to play the game, and later that night when we got home, Chris played a couple more practice rounds with her. He’s better at this kind of stuff than I am.

Pokemon practice. The cat is just an observer.
Even though he was playing while half-asleep on the living room floor.

Catie was excited to understand the game a little better, and she said she hopes the next time she sees Dave’s girlfriend’s kids, she can beat them at Pokemon. We’ll see, I guess.

Meanwhile, Lucy had so much fun playing at my parents’ house that she was pretty much worn out by the time we got back.

Topless napping. It's all the rage.
Poor sleepy little pumpkin.

Both kids were out for the night before their bedtime (I try to get them to bed by 8:30 or 9; last night, they were both out by 8:15). I’m going to consider that a sign of a successful weekend.

I hate the word staycation but I guess that’s what it is

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We’re about halfway through our month-long summer break, and it’s been really nice so far. Catie loves the track-out program at our daycare. They have field trips every day, plus she’s known most of the other kids since she was in pre-K, and they’re all friends.

I’ve been trying to make sure we do as much “get out and have fun” stuff as possible, when I’m not working. Like, we’ll go to Goodberry’s in the evenings after dinner, and the kids will run around and play chase behind the building.

Girls playing at Goodberry's
Frozen custard plus playtime to burn off the sugar rush. Perfection.

We’ve been to the pool so many times that, despite my rigorous efforts at constantly slathering on sunscreen, both girls now have swimsuit tan lines. I never seem to get pictures at the pool because I’m always in the water with them (I have this fear about iPhone + water), but that’s been a lot of fun. Lucy started off this summer so cautious about the water that I couldn’t coax her off the steps into to the kiddie pool, and by last week, she was counting to three and then leaping off the edge of the pool into my arms.

The fourth of July was a lot of fun. We went to my cousin’s house so the kids could play, and we grilled hot dogs and made s’mores over the fire pit in their backyard.

Catie & Elizabeth. 7 year-old cousins. Keeping a safe distance from the fire pit while we cooked hot dogs.
Catie and her cousin Elizabeth keeping an eye on their hot dogs from a safe distance.

Then we went to watch fireworks, and Lucy found a pretty comfy spot for watching them.

Lucy found a pretty sweet spot for watching fireworks.
She got excited every time she saw pink fireworks. “Pink! It’s my favorite color!” Yes, my little girly-girl, we know.

We’ve also made time for playing at Mimi and Pop-Pop’s house.

Love watching my girls play with the Fisher Price little people toys that were mine when I was little.
I love watching them play with toys that were mine when I was little. My sister, brother, and I played with the Fisher Price little people all the time.

And taking silly selfies.

Happy Lucy face. (And a mommy photobomb.)
That face, I swear.

And, when the kids have been with their dad, Chris and I have had some occasional date nights here and there.

Sunday date night. (Girls with their dad this weekend.)
Just… happy.

So, ok, maybe it’s not a trip to Disney World or a cruise or anything like that. It’s been a pretty nice little stay-at-home vacation regardless.

sticking a balloon up your nose sounds like a really bad idea

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A couple of years ago, I started seeing an Ear Nose & Throat doctor for some recurring sinus issues I was having. He recommended that I get sinus surgery, but the recovery time was at least two weeks. And he told me this when Lucy was a baby and I was a full-time single mom of two kids. So I basically balked at the idea.

I saw my doctor again a couple of months ago, and he told me about a new procedure called balloon sinuplasty, which is basically the same concept (taking a Roto Rooter to your nasal passages), but less invasive and the recovery time is minimal. And it turns out my insurance covers it, too.

So I’m having it done later this week. The kids will be with Dave for a couple of nights while I sleep off the anesthesia and recuperate. I’m not anticipating any issues, but you know, when you throw the word “surgery” around, things start to sound kind of scary. Good thoughts welcome.

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The kids spent this past weekend with Dave. It occurred to me that this might have been the first time he got to be with both kids on Father’s Day in Lucy’s lifetime.

Actually, I guess that’s not true, because he was here in 2011 when she was two weeks old. But the vast majority of 2011 is kind of a blur for me. It’s weird when people tell me about something I said or did around the time Lucy was born and I have no recollection of it. (My dad mentioned something about painting Lucy’s nursery pink. I was like, “no, I never painted anything in that house.” Then I remembered that oh yeah, I did. Or maybe Dave painted it and I just decorated it with vinyl wall stickers afterward? I honestly can’t remember.) Everything from that time frame is fuzzy, like something that happened in a dream.

Anyway, the girls got to spend Father’s Day with him this year, and that’s a good thing. Lucy’s daycare class all made some kind of art project for their respective dads, and Catie made him a dragon, since she made me one for Mother’s Day and I guess felt like she needed to be fair.

"I knew Mother's Day was coming up, so I made you this dragon." I swear, 7 is my favorite age yet.

I know I’m not objective, but I do really like her dragons.

I don’t say much about Dave here, because I generally think it isn’t appropriate. But I will say that it’s been really great having him actively involved in the kids’ lives these past several months. I think it’s been good for all of us.

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I miss blogging. It’s hard because lately I feel so scrutinized. I know a couple of people are reading here, looking for any tiny detail they can use against me or Chris.

What’s the expression, it’s not paranoia if people really are out to get you? That. It seems there are some people whose entire existence is based on trying to suck the happiness out of others’ lives. Joy thieves really suck to have around.

Hopefully, this too shall pass, and eventually I won’t feel quite so censored. But for now, I have to use the “mute” button pretty heavily on a lot of my life, and I hate it.