Adventures in new school routines and last minute restaurant dancing...

Well, it may not be pretty, but I'm makin' it. 😂 The weeks are long right now, but we're getting there. Let's settle in for a drink!

I've lived through another week, which these days, is an enormous accomplishment. I feel like this each day lately when I get up in the morning:

Life is a marathon right now, but I'm trying to sprint through each day. I'm getting there, but each evening when I am trying to keep my eyes open before collapsing into bed I am very aware that I am trying to do too much and that I cannot keep up this pace forever. But in the short term, until the competition finals are over, I'm not really sure what else to do. So I'm hanging on for dear life and doing the best I can.

Henry is loving his new high school. I'm quite shocked at how he's clearly acclimated already and thriving. We're still figuring out how we're getting him to and from school each day, since he starts and finishes at completely different times from Anne, but we'll get there. We live close enough that he always has the option to walk/bike, which is absolutely clutch. 

As for Anne, things are still a struggle. She has not acclimated to her new class, and is not thriving in any way. I'm anxious to talk to her teacher, but unfortunately, her teacher's mom passed away this week, and so there has been a substitute. Therefore (quite understandably) it's going to be awhile before I'll be able to get a sense of how she's doing when she's actually at school. I just know that at home, she's been quite unhappy and down about school. Mike and I are both, consequently, quite anxious about all of this. It's been challenging, for sure.

My car goes in to be repaired on Monday, thankfully. But my litany of other appointments remain, and I'm just balancing them all in the short term as best I can. My classes are finally all scheduled, so that's something.

In my dance world, it's been complete and total chaos. :-0 I've been preparing for the competition, and my troupe is preparing for a hafla that is coming up in just a few weeks, but everything is on hold at the studio right now because one of our instructors is getting married this weekend. And in the midst of all this, I've had several paid gigs. I hadn't had a paid gig since New Year's Eve, and now I've had 2 in the past 3 weeks. 😳 And it's great, don't get me wrong. But it's been so stressful at a time when I've had so much else going on, I can hardly think straight.

Last week, my instructor and main dancing partner in gigging situations messaged me to see if I was available to dance at the grand re-opening of a restaurant we frequently dance at on New Year's Eve. They had had a fire, and had been closed for 5 months. They wanted to hire us to dance, but the re-opening was in 3 days.

😬

Now, here's the thing: we're belly dancers. We improvise for a living. I can put together a set list and dance to it with 5 minutes of notice. But emotionally, paying gigs take a lot out of me. You're in costume and performing to the utmost of your ability for anywhere from 12-20+ minutes, and it's exhausting. Restaurant sets are usually 20 minutes for us, and we each dance 2 or 3. It takes a lot of physical stamina and emotional well being. And the emotional thing has been a bit low of late. :-0

But this is a great restaurant, a great opportunity, and great extra pay. So we agreed to do it.

That Friday found me applying stage makeup as Mike and the kids ripped up carpets in the upstairs hallway, remember that? I'm stepping over staples and disintegrated carpet pad as I frantically race around looking for my 4D mascara and extra facial glitter. Claire and I arrive at 5 pm for a 4 hour stretch of waiting amongst straw wrappers and sugar packets, interspersed with 20 minute sets of dancing. This restaurant is lovely, but their sound system is not the best, and stress abounded with getting the music to play loudly, all while people keep coming up to ask me if I can seat them at a table. :-0 It's always a little wacky at these adventures. I will also say that it adds an element of interest to improvisational dancing when you don't even remember what you put on your set list. :-0

But it went great, and I went home a limp noodle after a very long day. I don't know how much longer I can keep up this pace, but I have to until September 22nd. Then I can start worry about my crazy teaching load (5 classes that next day alone) and the hafla that I don't even know the dance for yet. 😂I don't know, I guess we'll figure it all out! But I have to admit, I don't like things to be *quite* this exciting all at the same time!

What's new with you as September reaches it's mid point?

Some graduation related tears...

Hello friends, and welcome back! I'm a little bit emotional this week, and I just need to chat about life in general, so let's settle in for a cup of coffee!

This past Tuesday was Henry's 8th grade graduation from the K-8 Catholic school he's been at since 1st grade (that's quite a trip down memory lane, that link I just posted. I'm going to try not to cry again 😭). I took it HARD. This was surprising even to me: "Tiffany. It's 8th grade. It's not even a real graduation! Get a grip!" But there it is. I had a very difficult time with it.

I went to public school. The longest I was ever at any school was 6 years from kindergarten through 6th grade, and I don't have particularly fond memories from any of the three schools I attended before college. But my kids' school...it's different. It's a family. Everybody knows your name there. Everybody cares. Many of the people working there, as well as parents of other kids, are alumni of the school. The class sizes are small, and a warm and fuzzy sense pervades. A few pertinent anecdotes:

A beloved kindergarten teacher passed away two years ago, after teaching at this school for *37 years*. The Pre-k and kindergarten wing of the school is now named for her, because she was such a fixture there, teaching kindergarten to multiple generations of families. The school was emotionally gutted when she died.

Henry's 8th grade class held a tribute to the Pre-k 4 teacher, who came to the school the year that this particular class started Pre-k. Now those 4 year olds are leaving and going to high school. There wasn't a dry eye in the house for that one.

I never had a school experience like this. And Henry has been there for 8 years. He started there when I was pregnant with Anne, and I had prayed a novena for Mike to be won over to this school, to provide the impetus to move him from where he was to somewhere we'd have to pay tuition for him to attend. And he was. And it was one of the best decisions we ever made.

This school is a place of comfort and solace to me. It's warm and welcoming, and it's a community filled with faith. Anne will still be there for 6 more years, and the alumni certainly seem to keep up with the school, so I'm certain that it will always be in our lives. But my Henry, my first child, my guinea pig, the one I fretted over whenever we had to make a big change like this one due to his shyness and sweet nature, the one who spearheaded our foray into Catholic education...he won't be there anymore. My kids headed off to school, together, for the very last time. When I drive by the building every day on my way to work, and pray a Hail Mary for each of them, he won't be inside anymore. He's headed to a Catholic boys high school that he is SO EXCITED about, and I know that he will be in excellent hands there, but I keep coming back to something that repeatedly makes me cry:

It's the end of an era.

Anne owns a soft spot in my heart because she is my baby, but Henry owns an equally large soft spot because he is my first child, my beloved little boy who changed my life forever when he was born. Now he's heading off to something much larger and in some ways scarier, and certainly something that we have not experienced before with our kids: high school. He's becoming a young man, and while it's exciting to see, I'm also dreading all of these changes and all of the new worries that come along with them. I'm trying very hard, but I've been crying every single day. And my anxiety has been flaring up quite badly. But I keep trying.

Henry has some basketball goings on this summer at his new school, and he's also starting a work study program there to help fund his tuition. He'll ease in, to be sure, and they have an entire freshman welcome program designed to aid the kids in the transition. Most of the boys from his 8th grade class are also attending there, so he will see some familiar faces. And that's a good situation, because they're all really good kids. But it's going to be a BIG change.

I'm trying to hang in there over here, I promise. Mike hasn't started summer term teaching yet, so he's been home in the mornings after the kids go to school, and we've been talking a lot. About all of this and how we're struggling to handle it, each in our own way. It helps to have someone to talk to about it. My crafting has been a happy distraction, as has my dancing. I'll be posting about each of those in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep slogging on and hope that these emotional reactions to every little thing abate. I suppose it's part of the parenting journey, but it sure is cramping my style. :-0

I hope the rest of you are having a good week. I appreciate all virtual hugs and prayers! I guess I'm a little needy right now. 🤗

A summer of reading the classics with my kids...or at least I hope so :0

You know how it goes. You have a picture in your mind of what it will be like to summer with your school aged children:

You will cavort barefoot in the yard while eating popsicles. Baby goats might be involved. You will take adventurous road trips in which the children will never whine that they are bored.You will lounge in bathing suits under the sprinkler. You will grill delicious food, and sit in the garden reading the classics while drinks adorned with fresh mint sit by your side.

Or, well, maybe your vision isn't EXACTLY like mine, but ultimately they all involve your kids being well behaved and great sports about all of the activities you really want to do/will really make you feel like a parent who achieves actual worthwhile parenting goals. But it never turns out  QUITE that way.

We don't have a pool, or even a yard that lends itself to easily playing with balls of any kind. We live on an urban postage stamp and space is at a premium. Although we've had a sprinkler, it does little more than make our uneven backyard a swamp. Balls go over the fence with reckless abandon. Lacking a back deck or easy access to the back yard, grilling only takes place in the kitchen and often involves the smoke detector going off. The kids still want to play video games far too much of the time. All road trips involve whining. And getting them to read over the summer is like pulling teeth.

It's a keeping-it-real kind of post today. 😂

As a librarian, I take the reading thing pretty seriously. Henry has always been a great reader, but this past school year he has not read anything on his own, just things he had to read for school. Anne has struggled a bit with reading, and goes weekly to the school reading specialist. She has improved significantly, but it's especially important for her to keep reading over the summer. She, however, has decided that she only wants to read books that are well below her reading age level, probably because they are easier for her to read.

I read most of the C.S. Lewis Narnia series with Henry when he was Anne's age or a year or two older, and we both loved them. My attempt to start up The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe with Anne at bedtime ended in an attitude-y declaration that she wasn't enjoying the story. I've sent a bunch of samples to her Kindle, and I'm hoping to go through them with her to find something she is enthused by, though I sense that the problem is just her own stubbornness, which is tougher to fix than finding a story that catches her fancy. But at any rate, the selections include (she will be in 3rd grade in the fall):

Harriet the Spy
The Secret Garden (available for free on Kindle if you're a Prime member, fyi)
Charlotte's Web
The Princess and the Goblin
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew
Ballet Shoes

I remember several of these books from my own childhood, and they are quite nostalgic for me! I don't mind reading the fairy series that she favors, but goodness, I need a break from the monotonous, fixed plotlines you find in those books. :0 I like the summer to have a "theme," if you will, in terms of reading. Harry Potter, summer thrillers, maybe classical mysteries. For Anne, I want her to embark on books of substance, classics or otherwise nostalgic childhood reads from my own lifetime. For Henry, I just want him to read...something. Something that he enjoys, to get him back into reading for pleasure again. He read And Then There Were None with his literature class, and this morning expressed an interest in Murder on the Orient Express, which I immediately jumped on in full enthusiasm. :0

And Agatha Christie -along summer!

*party time!*

What are you planning to read this summer? Do you have suggestions for getting kids interested in reading more classical books? I'm all ears in the comments!

A Catholic Librarian family update :)

Hello all, and I hope that your May is starting off well! It certainly is over here, though we are quite busy, but in the best possible way. Life is full and good. :)

Mike is in a community theater production of "Dial M for Murder" this month, and so with his rehearsals in the evenings, plus my dance classes and events, plus kid activities...it's been busy! But as I've always told the kids: everybody should have a hobby that they love and are passionate about. Ideally, one should balance a single commitment-heavy hobby at a time, because otherwise family dinners go by the wayside and a person can hardly catch their breath for the crazy evenings. But all of us (especially this introverted family!) having one hobby that we love is a good, good thing.

Our big star of late has been Henry ;-) who had his moving up day at school and is in full-on high school prep mode. HOW ON EARTH DID THIS HAPPEN?! Everybody tells you that this will happen, that the years when your kids are growing up will fly by in the blink of an eye, but you do not believe them until it actually happens to you.

😭

Henry has been much more into sports this year, and we're very proud of the effort and patient dedication he has been putting into practicing and playing. In the fall, he played on the school basketball team, which is definitely his favorite sport. Once basketball season wrapped up, he expressed interest in playing volleyball (this is my most hated sport from school gym nightmares of old :0, but I have to say that the games are very fun to watch!) and has been doing that for about a month now.

Next year, he will be going to a Catholic boys high school that is within walking distance of our house, and he is SO excited about it. We are very excited for him, although not for our checkbook, eeks! :0 But I do think that the school will be a good fit for him, and that he will thrive there. Happily, most of his friends are going there as well. He has physically grown in an *exponential* fashion this school year. I will create a little collage of his first day/last day of school picture, the difference is that distinctive!

As for our little Anne, she is wrapping up second grade. She got her ears pierced this spring, and is also looking more and more big kid-like. 😭She comes up to my chest now in terms of height. 😬 Anne is the most social member of our family. She's an introvert as well, but she easily enjoys socializing with her peers in a very non-awkward fashion that the rest of us envy quite a bit. :0 Her birthday is coming up, and she will be 8. My baby! She's participated in Girl Scouts this year, and has absolutely loved it. They had a horseback riding gathering this past weekend, and their end-of-year meeting is right around the corner. She wants to participate again next year, and I think she's making great friends, and learning heartwarming and useful new things. It's a keeper! She'll be in third grade next year, and will continue on at the Catholic K-8 school she and Henry have been at for many years now.

As the school year wraps up, Mike and I are in awe of where are kids are in terms of their growth, physically and emotionally. When you have kids, you tend to think of just the little years, and don't think ahead to when they start becoming independent young men and women. Henry has definitely started that phase, and it doesn't seem like that long until Anne will approaching that same point anymore. It's emotional, for sure.

At Henry's moving up dinner, a number of parents put together a tribute to one of the school administrators, who started at our school the year that this current graduating 8th grade class was in Pre-K. Henry wasn't there until first grade, but I found the entire thing very touching. By the time it was over, there weren't too many dry eyes out in the audience. When the kids are little, it's a bit exhausting, because their physical needs are so vast, and they have zero emotional maturity, which makes for quite a loud and chaotic experience for a number of years. And it seems like those days, when you're going through them, will never end. But then they do, and you find a whole host of new things to worry about, and then suddenly WHAM! They're a budding small adult person, and you're like "what the heck happened here?!" I quite literally can't believe it. And I hope we're doing a good job, because there is a lot at stake. I may start to cry again.

😭

It's a time of a lot of transitions in our family, due to the kids growing and becoming interested in new things and experiences. We're hanging in there, but I'm weeping buckets of tears along the way.

So.many.tears.

What is going on with you this May? How do you handle big transitions with kids, or in other arenas of your life? I'd love to hear from you!

Summer routines, and adventures with odious insects...

Summer means a few things for me, though really, for everybody. Thing #1 is that routines change. The mornings with the kids bear no resemblance to what they do during the school year, and weekends often get packed with family parties and other celebrations. And this particular summer, for me personally, it means that a nefarious family of insects are eating me alive IN THE PRIVACY OF MY OWN HOME.

😡

See, this is one of the reasons I like living in a climate that is frozen over for part of the year. Horrible little creatures who bite and sting cannot survive in the tundra. :0

The past 5-6 mornings, I have woken up with red bumps on my arms that quickly escalate to puffy, itchy things of misery. Being the paranoid person that I am, I immediately Googled:

"bed bug images."

Good and gentle reader, unless it is a true apocalyptic emergency, NEVER DO THIS. You're welcome.

Their bite marks are innocuous enough to look like so many other insect bites (this is part of their powerful evil empire, to be sure) however, the other signs of bed bugs in one's house were lacking in ours (thank you Jesus), so I felt fairly confident that my bites were not from them. But I was puzzled, because I haven't been outdoors very much, I'm discovering the new bites in the mornings even when I wear long sleeved nightgowns, and I have not seen nary an infiltrating insect, winged or otherwise, in our house.

I was dropping the kids off at my in-laws' on my way to work yesterday morning, and I showed them to my mother-in-law, a former nurse. She gently told me that they were mosquito bites.

Well, that was anti-climactic. I was lodging a full fledged conspiracy theory of the insect kingdom.

I don't often get mosquito bites, so that's why I didn't immediately jump to that logical conclusion. I'm not much of an outdoors gal, truth be told. I have hyper sensitive skin that reacts if a dandelion looks at me sideways, and the sun and I have a decidedly love/hate relationship. And I live in western New York, where no living insect can dwell for 5ish months out of the year. In other words, I'm not often exposed to mosquitoes. But that is what has been biting me.

Given the fact that I scour my arms each morning upon waking up, and find 1-2 new bites, I know for a fact the following:

(1) he or she has taken up residence in my house;

(2) he or she is going hog wild overnight and biting me as I sleep;

(3) he or she is clandestinely hiding during the day, as I glimpse no flying objects nor hear any buzzing during waking hours; and

(4) he or she MUST BE ERADICATED WITH RUTHLESS EFFICIENCY.

I'm not normally speaking such virulent hatred towards other living beings, but this one (and it's family too, I have no shame) have got to go. My arms are a mess. The previous bites are healing only very slowly, and my poor arms have these unattractive red puffy bumps all over them. I'm itching and rubbing lavender oil on them like crazy.

Last night, I did have a victory. I diffused lemon and peppermint (I don't have any Citronella oil, though some is currently on order; fly little Citronella oil, fly!) which I read that mosquitoes hate (*snort* did they poll the mosquitoes?) and I did not have any new bites this morning. Just an escalating one from the morning before that is at peak itch form and growing redder.

😠

And you know what unfair thing is? My husband, sleeping contentedly *right beside me* in our double bed, has nary a bite on him. Apparently, MOSQUITOES DO NOT LIKE HIM. What is this nonsensical crazy talk? Mosquitoes have *preferences* as to which people they bite? Whenever I've mentioned this little problem I've been having to others, this has been bandied about *multiple times*:

"Oh yes. Mosquitoes love certain people and never bite others."

Well, how do I get to be one of these vaulted OTHER people? Is this like that second group on the island on "Lost?" I mean, what the heck?

I'll be on mosquito patrol for the short term foreseeable future. My diffuser will be misting off anti-mosquito propaganda each night, and Mike is spraying something my mother-in-law claims will work around the doors and windows. We'll see.

But I got off track, didn't I? :0 I was going to talk about summer routines, because ours is all loosey goosey, like I imagine yours are too. I'm taking way longer than I should to get me and the kids out of the house in the mornings because there isn't the rushy impetus that there is during the fall and spring semesters, and Mike is teaching summer classes with his hours kind of wonky as well. I suppose that's the way summer is supposed to be though, yes?

The kids LOVE being off from school, though to me, the lack of structure is problematic for them. Sure, they can amuse themselves, but they need to be encouraged to move off the couch and away from video games. And by "encouraged," I mean "directly told that their game time is up and that they are duty bound to play outside for the rest of the afternoon." I'm not the best at coming up with crafts and summer activity ideas (because those usually involve going outside) but I do what I can. So my summer routine means coming up with ideas for my kids' summer routine.

I wish all summer days were like this past Sunday, wherein a gentle rain fell outside as I knitted and drank tea in my leggings and comfy top. What is this that you say? That I am delusional? Indeed. 😂

What does your summer routine look like? I need ideas, people! :0

Quiet joy and exhaustion on Gaudete Sunday weekend...

Did you all light your rose candles this weekend? I wish I could say that I did, but as has been epic this Advent, I FORGOT. I'm going to try to remember tonight.

#CatholicMotherOfTheYear

But Anne and I DID wear pink to Mass yesterday, and she and Henry both remembered (at my prompting) to bring the baby Jesuses from their nativity sets with them for a special blessing that our parish does this Third Sunday of Advent.

*halo*

Mass was particularly peaceful this week. Anne was very excited to bring up our gift to put under the Giving Tree, and Henry was very into paying close attention to the altar servers so that he could mentally review for his next serving Mass. He also went back into the sacristy afterward to solidify his place as a server for the 11 am Christmas Day Mass, and I'm *very* excited for this.

I think that I keep forgetting about the Advent candles because of how busy our weekends have been of late. This was Henry's second play performance weekend, and we also had a gingerbread house building event with Anne at school. Translation: Anne ate gumdrops while Mike and I got frosting all over ourselves and the table. But in the end, we managed a serviceable house.

*pins on gold star*

It was a great weekend. And then, at 4 am this morning:

"Mom! Dad! Could you come in here?!"

It was Anne. I was unconscious. Mike goes in to discover Anne heavily wiggling a loose tooth. He tells her to leave it alone until morning. Oh the level of parental naivete in the dark hours.

30 minutes later...

"Mom! Dad! COULD YOU COME IN HERE?!"

Mike, bless his soul, goes in again, while I toss and turn in our bed. Anne's tooth has fallen out. He tucks it into a paper cup and tells her to go back to sleep. The Tooth Fairy will come in the NEXT overnight session.

30 minutes later...

*Anne's door clicks open*

*Anne's door clicks closed*

*Anne's door clicks open*

*Anne's door clicks closed*

WHY GOD, WHY?! When I think about the sheer volume of sleep that I have lost owing to my offspring's after hours shenanigans, I want to weep.  I turn on the light while Mike goes to investigate. Anne has lost her lost tooth.

*collapses*

A massive toothhunt gets underway, because even at 5 am we know that telling Anne to go back to bed and we will find it in the morning will have the effect of tears and wails.

"Mom. I asked myself: 'if I was a tooth, where would I be?!' And so I looked under the bed. But it's not there!"

*long suffering sigh*

The tooth was eventually located amongst her sheets and we all went back to bed. But let's just say that the aftereffect exhaustion remains. The Tooth Fairy will be on a flying mission tonight.

Aside from being tired, I'm in good Advent spirits. How are you this Advent Monday, dear friends?