mamajoan

Happy new year! I hope that everyone reading this, if anyone is still reading this, had a pleasant holiday season. We did, overall, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Last night I was reading through some of my old entries, as I often do. Someone on Facebook had asked about birthday parties for 3-year-olds, and I couldn't remember exactly what we did for those with my kids, so I came on here and clicked into my archive from around the time Isaac turned 3. I didn't find a post with details about his party (just a bunch of posts about getting ready for it, and then an "it's over, omg I'm so tired" post afterward), but I fell down the rabbit-hole and went on reading through my entries from that time period for a while.

Mind you, that was a particularly..."active" period in my life, with a lot of stuff going on: adjusting to life with two kids, coming back to work from maternity leave, looking for a new job, and dealing with some upset-tummy stuff that I didn't realize at the time was foreshadowing the eventual doom of my gall bladder. ;) But that's not the point. The point is that whenever I go back and read through my old posts -- wherein I often give extensively (some might say excessively) detailed descriptions of everything we did in a particular day -- I can't help thinking that my ten-years-from-now self is going to be upset to come back and not see those same kinds of entries from now. If the me with an 8- and 11-year-old enjoys rereading what I wrote about life with a 3-year-old and infant, won't the me with a 20- and 17-year-old (yikes) want to read about what my life was like when they were 8 and 11? That sentence was ugly. Please pretend it never happened.

Anyway, so the other night I thought "I'll make a resolution to post a "what we did today" every day for 2015." But obviously that's highly unrealistic, not least because it's already the fifth day of 2015. ;) So I think I'll aim for one post per week and see how that goes.

For starters, let me say a little bit about our winter vacation break that just ended.

( Our Winter Break 2014-2015 )

Obviously I could go on and on and on ;) but that's enough for one post. More to come.

Remember me? ;)

I went on the trip that I posted about here a while ago -- two weeks in Glasgow for training for my job. The kids and I all survived it, but I sure don't want to be separated from them for anywhere NEAR that long again, not for many years yet.

No, I didn't really enjoy the trip. I mean, the training course itself was extremely useful and I learned a lot and am very glad that I did it from that perspective. And yes, I did a few fun things, particularly on the intervening weekend (went to Edinburgh one day, and took a bus tour of the Scottish Highlands the other day -- both times with a coworker who had come along). But mostly it just wasn't fun. I was tired/jet-lagged most of the time; the class was 9-5 and could feel very lonnnnggg -- they pack SO much material into those two weeks! -- and when class ended each day, it was what, 5:30, you get back to the hotel room, and you have a whole evening to kill and nothing much to do with it. That part of the day was the worst for me. It was boring and depressing to sit around the hotel room, trying not to think about the kids, basically just killing time until 11pm (which was when I could call them -- 11pm Glasgow time being 6pm Boston time).

A few evenings I did walk around the city a bit, either by myself or with coworkers, and that was nice. A few times we went out to dinner together which was also nice and was good for killing pretty much the whole evening. And the World Cup was on, which was a huge big deal around there, so I kinda got into that as well.

The kids did fine with all the many people who cared for them during the time I was away. We did Skype chats almost every night, both voice and video. So we stayed in touch and they were basically going about their usual routines most of the time, so they were mostly okay, although Ruthie apparently got tearful after almost every video chat with me.

Then I got back, and we immediately turned around and went out to our family's summer cottage for July 4th weekend. Which was nice, but maybe not the best way for me and the kids to reconnect; and I was mostly useless due to the jet-lag and general exhaustion. So it was good to finally get back home and move back into our usual routines.

Last week we went to Cape Cod with my mom and her brother, my uncle. Mom had reserved a small suite in a resort, through her time-share (long story) so we had basically two rooms with a small kitchen area and two bathrooms, and access to an indoor pool and an outdoor pool and a jacuzzi and, of course, the ocean. ;) The kids had never really spent much time at the ocean (Isaac a little, Ruthie none) so it was a whole new thing and they had a lot of fun. There are a zillion miniature-golf places on Cape Cod, and Isaac wanted to play every one of them...twice! ;)

So today is my first day back to work after the week off, and of course, coming back after vacation sucks. Ah well.

I know I probably say this all the time, but I want to start posting here regularly again. I just have so much that floats through my head -- that is, yes, too long to tweet ;) -- and it has to come out. I feel like I don't do any writing these days, which is kind of crazy considering that it's what I do for a living....

OK, once again I'm behind on posting. This time my reason is that I've been in a training course all week, 9-5. It's interesting and fun, and sometimes frustrating, but always exhausting. Oy.

ANYway...Halloween was a blast. Having it on a Saturday was great. In the morning we went to a Halloween party (thinly disguised as a "fall festival") at Ruthie's preschool, where the kids had a blast. Then to mom's house for nap, where Ruthie and Baz napped together and mom managed to capture a picture of same, which is undeniably the cutest thing ever.

( The totally adorable picture )

Then we went to a party at Baz and metafrantic and sandykidd's house, which was fun, and then home and trick-or-treating. Isaac was a Transformer and Ruthie was a duck, and sandykidd did a great job of painting their faces to go with their costumes, but alas I don't think I got any pictures! :( Oh well.

It was a freakishly warm night, which was nice. The neighbors were all hanging out on their front steps/porches waiting for us. The kids got QUITE the haul of candy. After a while their bags got so heavy that they asked me to carry them, whereupon I decided that enough was enough. ;)

Anyway, so that was fun. And then came the Halloween Witch! (Also known as the Switch Witch, but I don't like that one.)

Have you guys heard of this? I had never heard of the idea until a few weeks ago. Basically the "Switch Witch" is like the tooth fairy, except that instead of taking teeth she takes kids' Halloween candy, and instead of leaving money she leaves a toy. The idea, obviously, is to get them to give up some of their candy. ;)

Well, I wasn't at all sure how my kids would react to this idea, since they both LOVE candy, and especially since I had said they couldn't eat any candy for 5 days before Halloween and then eat as much as they wanted on the day (which my mom always used to do with me and metafrantic and I think it worked out pretty well).

Anyway, so I decided to just give it a shot and see what happened. If they didn't go for it, fine, but it couldn't hurt to try, right?

( Our 'Switch Witch' Story )

Whee! So that was fun. We're definitely doing that again next year.

I just balanced my checkbook and discovered that Isaac's afterschool program apparently did not cash a check that I wrote to them back in May. This is weird and I'm not sure what to do with it. Also I'm not sure why I'm just noticing this now, since I have balanced my checkbook several times since May! I guess I'll try to give them a call.

I also received in the mail a check from Ruthie's former daycare, with a notation saying simply that it's a "refund." The amount of the check is not the amount of my weekly payments there -- although now that I think about it, possibly it's the amount that my weekly payments were when she was in the toddler room? In any case this is also weird and I'm leery of cashing the check. But I also don't really want to call them. but I guess I oughta.

Speaking of Ruthie and school, her new preschool is going pretty well. She still get super-clingy at morning dropoff time, but that's typical for her. And she's always very cheerful at pickup time, and talks happily about the fun things she did. So I think she's doing well.

And speaking of money stuff, it's uh, under control. ;) I guess maybe I should check my credit card balance before I say that though. ;) An unfortunate downside of starting my new job on the 14th of the month is that I missed the 15th-of-the-month payday so I won't get paid until the last day of the month. But on the plus side, that should be a pretty nice big check. So there's that to look forward to.

And speaking of the new job, it's going quite well so far. I'm completely exhausted, but that's to be expected. The commute is giving me major headaches, which I shall perhaps have to post about sometime soon. But the job itself is looking good thus far. And that's all I shall say about that.

Things have been pretty stressful around here the past few months, not coincidentally coinciding with my dramatic decrease in LJ posts.

To recap:

* In October I got laid off and my grandmother died.
* In November a family friend, a woman my mom's age with kids almost my age, died of breast cancer. And we got bad news about a cousin, also my mom's age (i.e.: way too young), who has pretty bad Alzheimer's.
* Meanwhile hanging over all of this has been the illness of yet another family friend, the mother of my friend Brian who lives upstairs from me. She has a host of serious medical problems including, most recently, breast and brain tumors. Her condition has been up and down a lot in the past month or two.
* Then this month an online friend of mine found a lump in her breast which turned out to be cancerous. She wound up with a semi-urgent mastectomy and now is facing chemo. I find myself hit hard by this one, not least because she was still nursing her 3-year-old and was forced to wean her cold turkey on extremely little notice. I can't even type about it without getting all weepy so I'll leave it at that.

So, things have been difficult. yeah.

I have a policy of not talking about work outside of friends-locked posts. So all I'll say here is that my temporary 3-to-4-month gig is now in its second month and I'm grateful to have the income in this economy, and starting to worry a bit about what's going to happen when the contract is up. Also, the commute is definitely contributing to my stress. On the plus side, I get to sit on the subway and read for a good chunk of time every day. But on the minus side I'm constantly stressed about getting there (wherever "there" happens to be) on time.

The kids, overall, are doing fine. Isaac is loving kindergarten, although as I had feared, he's overtired and emotionally volatile, especially in the evenings. Ruthie is doing fine at daycare and starting to show some signs of toddler stubbornness/disobedience or whatever you want to call it -- ask any mom with older kids and she'll tell you that the "terrible twos" are a myth, that age 3 is really when things got "terrible." And Ruthie will be 3 in a mere two months. Hoo boy.

Anyway...so of course that's only a small portion of what's been going on around here, but I had to start somewhere. I can't even tell you how many fascinating and entertaining LJ posts I've written in my head. You would have laughed, you would have cried, you would have sprained a finger in your haste to click the "leave a comment" link. ;) Oh well.

I started the new job today. It went fine I guess. I shall probably post more later, under friends-lock (I always friend-lock posts about work). Mainly, though, I just feel like crap thanks to the cousin who brought us a cold from Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. I am going to bed super-early and hoping I won't be as crappy and cranky tomorrow.

The day was off to an inauspicious start when I was rudely awakened by a loud motor noise outside my window that I thought was someone mowing their lawn. At 6:15a.m.?! I got out of bed and threw on my bathrobe and went outside to investigate. It turned out to be at least two helicopters, circling in the air above my general vicinity. I've since learned that there was apparently a big fire at a halfway house not far from where I live, which explains it, and I guess I should just be grateful that I wasn't awoken even earlier by fire trucks or what have you. I dunno. I tried to go back to sleep, but that was pretty futile by that point, alas.

Anyway, on the bright side, everyone in my household seems to be feeling much better today (KNOCK WOOD!!). We got up and got ready and headed off for school and work as usual.

I forgot to mention in my post yesterday that I was worried about what to do when it came time to pick up Ruthie from daycare. It could have been pure coincidence that Isaac threw up just after the car started moving -- or it could have been directly related. I didn't know, but I was worried. But there wasn't a good alternative, so in the end I made him hold a large plastic bowl in his lap and off we went. He was totally fine though. Really, he had been fine within about half an hour after he barfed that morning; he spent most of the day alternately begging me to go outside and play baseball with him, and begging me to give him various not-gentle-on-the-tummy foods, like pizza (ha...NOT) and brownies. (We watched a cooking show about brownies and all of a sudden it was "Let's make brownies for dinner!" I repeat, ha...NOT.) He was more fine than I was! Mind you, I was pretty much fine too, except for being weak and listless from not having eaten. We both had bananas and toast and crackers, and did fine. In the evening Isaac had hummus on bread, and I had a teeny tiny peanut-butter sandwich, and that was fine too. Whew.

I made him hold the bowl again this morning when we drove to preschool, but it was just silly by that point. heh.

Anyway, so now everything seems to be back to normal, knock wood. The kids are back at school and I'm back at work. I even had my morning cup of tea, which I didn't have the past two mornings, and that seems to be sitting fine. I'm looking forward to an afternoon without a splitting caffeine-withdrawal headache! ;) And I'm pondering how adventurous I'm going to feel at lunchtime. My guess: not very.

I'm also feeling much less stressed about work after having come in today and cleared up some misconceptions about my current project. (I thought that the thing I'm working on was supposed to be delivered to a customer tomorrow. It turns out it's supposed to be done in first-complete-draft form tomorrow, which is a VERY different thing. Whew.)

Ruthie tends to be VERY chatty in the first like 5-10 minutes after she wakes up. She sits up in bed and talks a mile a minute. This morning it was something about how she was sitting down in her new daycare room, eating, and other kids were playing, and they ran past her and knocked her over and she hurt herself. But when I started asking questions, suddenly it morphed into an incident at the playground. And then it was "I was swinging at the playground." Oh really? She loves to swing, but I can't really picture one of the daycare teachers taking the time to push Ruthie in the swing for any length of time when they have 15 (or whatever) other kids to keep track of. So I said "who was pushing you in the swing?" and she said "Grandma." LOL. So I'm not sure what happened with that story. Maybe some other kid did knock her down at school. Maybe she dreamed it. Maybe someone knocked her down at the playground. Maybe nothing happened at all. Who the hell knows? She's only 2, she doesn't exactly construct a linear plotline. ;)

Soooo...and how's YOUR tuesday going? heh.

We had free breakfast at the office this morning for a company meeting. (I shall post more about the company meeting under friends-lock. Nothing bad took place, but I like to keep all my work-related content under lock.) By the time the meeting was done it was almost noon, and there was tons of food left, so it was also free lunch.

But I ate too much of it and had another of my gall-bladder-related attacks. :( I haven't had one of those in SO long!! I have only myself to blame though. I knew I shouldn't have that last bowl of yogurt with berries and granola (especially after it had been sitting out for hours) but I ate it anyway. It was dumb.

So I got to feeling so nauseated, I decided to leave the office and come home. Of course, by the time I got here, I was feeling pretty much all better. D'oh! But better safe than sorry I guess. oh well.

more later.

The last couple of days have not been good. I had high hopes for today being much better, since I was planning to take a mental health day; but upon waking up this morning, suddenly realized that I had a meeting today. (Can blame my boss for this one as he neglected to include me on the MS Outlook invitation so it was not on my calendar yesterday when I checked to see whether I could safely take today off. Sigh. That's what I get for being all responsible and shit.)

So I am at the office, my ears hurt (sinus issues, suspect nascent ear infection), and am cranky. Hope to get my mental health day tomorrow.

wah.

Um. So things have been very busy at work this week, and Ruthie has been waking up a lot so I've been going to bed early. Which is why I haven't been posting much.

Anyway, sorry for the somewhat lame-ass April Fool's post the other day. Ah well. BTW, the part about my financial situation being kind of dire was not a joke, unfortunately. Right now I am ostriching that though; too much else going on.

Congratulations go out to: hardcorewife whose fourth baby and third daughter, Evelyn, arrived last Monday (Ruthie's birthday buddy! :) ), and queenalia whose second son, Adam, arrived last Friday, and my non-LJ-having friend Amy whose fourth daughter, Hope, arrived last Thursday. Whew! And with whuffle and evil_macaroni about to pop any day now, it's just babies busting out all over the place. Must be spring. ;)

In Ruthie news she is starting to be able to identify some letters and numbers. The other day I showed her a letter "S" fridge magnet and said "what letter is this?" and she said "Five!" which I thought was pretty good. :) She also spontaneously identified a Crazy Eights card as "red four" and a letter L as an L. And this morning she counted thusly: "One two three four four five six seven eight nine ten eleven eleven eleven eleven..." LOL. She says "ee-yeh-ven" which I think is just so cute. ;D In other Ruthie news ( cut for TMI bodily-functions stuff )

Isaac came home from preschool the other day with a band-aid on his finger, which he showed me, and when I asked what happened, he said that they were at the playground and his friend M "tried to bite me." Which apparently means "bit me." Hmm. Upon further conversation he said that M and another kid L were "being mean to me" which apparently means chasing him, and that they were "trying to get me out of the way" and he put his hands up, or something, whereupon M bit him. Well, it's really hard to know what really happened from the way Isaac recounts these things; and I'm certainly hesitant to call it bullying because M and L are basically good kids and are Isaac's friends. It's entirely possible that they were actually playing together just fine and M suddenly decided to bite for no reason. It's also quite possible that Isaac provoked M in some way. Who knows? Anyway, I started to tell Isaac that if M and L were bothering him, he should run and tell a teacher; but before I could even get that out, he said it himself. So at least he knows what he should do, though whether he actually does it will be another question.

OK, back to work, more later.