Analogy

It has been awhile again.  I would be a better blogger if I blogged from my phone, but I'm not 13 and I like to type on a keyboard, so I'm not a better blogger.
I read an article from a friend of a friend on facebook about how moms with kids in middle school kind of drop out of the blogosphere.  It is a new frontier we've entered and although our house is primarily elementary, there has been a shift this year.  We have a child rapidly approaching his teens and it makes the challenges of a nine and seven year old seem far less challenging.  We have good conversations, but we have to be intentional about having them.  It would be easy to assume he is on autopilot and stick with the basics, is he eating, drinking, sleeping, breathing?

He's doing so much more than that.  Next week he will finish up the 3rd marking period of 6th grade.  We don't have much communication with teachers in middle school and we were warned of that going in, but our communication has been positive.  He handles his own issues better than I did at his age.  He finished ski club (which was really snow board club for him) a week before this picture was taken.  Squeezed in one more ski day before the season ended.

They all did great.  Sarah wanted to try out her dad's poles.  We may have to get them their own next time.

It was a beautiful day and we tried out a different mountain from the one on New Year's.  Conditions here are pretty icy and crowded, but it is nice to at least have the option to ski for an afternoon or a day without packing up and and staying away overnight.

We have re-entered the girl scout world again this year after taking a year off and we are having fun.  I'm attempting the leader thing with Sarah.  There are seven girls in her troop and four of the moms signed up to be leaders in the fall--pretty nice adult/child ratio, but things have changed in peoples' lives over the last several months as they tend to do and I have taken more of a leader role than I imagined I would be taking.  We're having fun.  It isn't perfect and there is that whole roller coaster ride that comes with every part of parenting, but we're doing okay.

Hannah was able to join a Brownie troop of her friends and is having a great time too.  I'm learning from watching her troop leaders and trying to help out when I can.

She was even able to help out another troop on a day that I needed her to be at an event I had to be at for Sarah's troop, but that her troop was not able to make.  She did a great job helping represent Greece for the World Association Day.

We girls were on our own that particular weekend while Nathan was on a youth group retreat in Pennsylvania and Joe was in Hong Kong paying his respects to our beloved Tai Tai.  We also said goodbye to our Aunt Frances.

I know we had seen her since this picture was taken in December of 2007, but I love this one.  Looking back at those pictures reminds me of how quickly time moves and how much we need to treasure those moments we have with those we love.  And how much Hannah has grown up.

What an amazing transformation we are seeing in her this year.  Last week she had her student led conference where she shared with me a second persuasive essay...she wants a rodent of some kind along with the replacement dog after Max "moves on".  She is fairly persuasive.

This is "Nibbles".  She is Hannah's friend, Rebecca's, guinea pig.  We had the privilege of guinea pig sitting while Rebecca and her family were in Florida for a few days.  We love Nibbles.  She's cute and funny, but messy and we're not quite sure we're ready to take on another living creature in this house just yet.

Our current living creature almost was not our current anything.  The day Joe got back from Hong Kong, I let Max out as I have thousands of times before, took a phone call, continued on with laundry and dinner and kids coming home from school....and just forgot him.  It was a jet-lagged Joe who asked, "Where's Max?"  At that point, my stomach dropped.  It had been at least 2 hours since I had let him out and I had no memory of letting him back in.  Because I didn't.  We searched.  It got dark.  And cold.  We stopped searching.  Then we got the best news we could get at that point.  He was ok.  "Bumped" by a car and in a vet overnight, but okay.  Much money and many vet visits later, we have him back and even better than he was before.  That vet was able to help his eyes which have been a problem for almost a year now.  He's still hanging in there, in spite of requests to find his replacement.

In other news, and after what feels like months and months of wiggling, this young lady has lost one of her top front teeth.  At her last dentist appointment, we learned that she is a tongue thruster and will likely have "early orthodontic intervention".  Awesome mother that I am, I think my exact words were, "That sounds HORRIBLE!" as the dentist described what might need to happen to keep her new front teeth from coming in completely horizontally...this is what happens when you have two parents who have never, ever seen an orthodontist.  I gave my seven-year-old a complex.  Now we have to save for orthodontics and therapy.  Mother of the year, right here.

Maybe instead of therapy, we can bribe her with a guinea pig...
She seems easy enough to please.  I started this yesterday, but took a break as soon as she returned from a play date because I needed to do something.  Last week, she called  me back into her room after I had tucked her in and asked, "Mom, are you ever going to take me to the public library again?"  Something we managed on a weekly basis in Michigan has become a rare occurrence here.  So sad.  So yesterday, the girls and I went to the public library.  Such a disappointing library compared to our luxury one in Canton, but a huge improvement over the sad little choice we had in Belgium.  Trying to keep it all in perspective.  Nathan has assigned reading these days and is looking forward to reading the Divergent series with me, maybe over spring break?  At the moment the girls and I are consumed with the Harry Potter books.  My first time reading them and I am hooked.  We're on book 3 and have watched the first two movies as well.  I think Sarah might be done after book 3.  They are getting a little dark for her.  Although she was wearing the witch hat and walking around with a pencil casting spells a couple of days ago, so maybe she is too invested to quit?

In fifteen minutes, I need to leave for my new "job".  That phone call I took when I forgot about Max, it was the mom of these little guys.  I have been taking care of them for almost a month now three days a week, three hours at a time.  Amazing family and adorable kids.  Although what I'm doing has nothing to do with NICU nursing, it gave the parents a ton of confidence knowing that I once managed babies for a living.  The next few months are up in the air as I'm sure their mom wants more care than I can give during the summer when my kids are home, but for now I'm taking one day at a time and enjoying these cuties while their mom gets a break from the 24 hour care they need and the sleep deprivation.

We're busy.  Plugging along with the usual dance, tumbling, baseball and homework and waiting to add in track and softball if the snow ever completely melts and let's spring arrive.  Trying to find the balance of managing the house and encouraging the other people who live in it to help manage it.  Weekend after weekend, I find myself in the same frantic state wondering how the place can become such a disaster after such a short time and try to talk myself down from the crazy place I go to.  Even after almost 14 years, my husband just does not get why I go to that crazy place.  I tried to explain with this analogy of what it feels like to be a stay at home mom....
The house is my office.  I am here all week, putting it together, trying to keep things organized and cleaned up.  On the weekend, I am still in my office, but try to pretend I'm somewhere else.  I asked him to imagine that he has made spreadsheets and written e-mails, scheduled meetings/held meetings all week long at work and then on the weekend, he went back to work, but there were all these people in his office deleting his spreadsheets and e-mails and canceling his meetings/making it like they never happened.  He could either sit there and watch it happen, yell at the people in his office constantly to stop undoing everything he did, or he could just go and re-do everything they were undoing at the same time it was being undone.
Does that sound like the kind of weekend anyone would ever want to have????  I think not.

I love being at home with my kids and just a tiny taste of being outside of the house during the week reminds me that I am very blessed to have as much time as I do have, but I still think I am entitled to a little crazy once in a while  I try to keep it to a minimum.

Time to run...