Life, Lately

I've been having trouble trying to come up with blog posts lately because we're so busy but life is also very routine.  This is good news in a lot of ways as it means Scot's health issues (which I haven't talked about on here very much) are beginning to resolve themselves and my stress level is beginning to reduce itself.  Thank God for small favors.  But, on the other hand, it makes for rather boring blog posts, no?

Instead, I'm just going to give you a "here's how it's going in the Two Kids and a Beagle household."

1.  Liam continues to attend kindergarten with gusto.  Loves school, loves his teacher, loves riding the bus, is making friends - what more could I ask for?  We don't have parent-teacher conferences until November but I'm hoping for a good report - both academically and behaviorally.

Liam is also continuing apace at Tae Kwon-Do.  Moving up into a color belt class was like moving from kindergarten to first grade.  It's not at all the same except that he's still supposed to behave himself and listen.  However, if he doesn't, he gets to do push ups.  But he's holding his own pretty well and he's already learning his next pattern.  The biggest change for him is that his class is now at 6:00 pm instead of 7:00 pm so he's busy from 5:00 (dinner time) until bedtime on TKD nights and that kind of ticked him off for awhile.  He's adjusting to it now, though, and pretty soon it will seem like it's always been like this.

2.  Jamie is now 19 months old and 28 lbs 12 oz.  He is, for lack of a better term, a tank.  I was honestly shocked when he weighed in because I expected him to be at least 30 lbs.  He certainly feels like he is - the kid is dense!  He, too, is enjoying his two days a week at daycare and practically throws his shoes at me if we're not moving out the door fast enough.

He's also expanding his language at lightning speed.  The other night, while I was at TKD with Liam, he looked at Scot and said "UPSTAIRS!  BATH!" over and over until Scot figured it out and said "you want to go upstairs and take your bath?"  Jamie snatched up his stuffed animals and made a beeline for the stairs as fast as his chubby little legs would carry him.  He certainly gets his point across, that's for darn sure.

3.  The beagle?  Continues to pee in my house.  There are no words.

4.  Scot and I will be celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary next week.  We've been together for 11 years now.  It's amazing how slowly 11 years seems to go when you're a child and how quickly they fly past when you're an adult.  And yet, here we are, with two kids, a dog, a mortgage, and being subversive in the suburbs.  ;)  When I was 17 years old, the thing I wanted most in life was to have children (and yes, I knew that college came first, thankyouverymuch, and then marriage).  I have my share of bad days being a stay at home Mom, but the truth is that I wanted this very much and I wouldn't chose differently if given a chance.  I love you, Scot!

5.  I remain corpulent.  There are no words for this, also.

6.  I become less enamored of my soccer mom title the longer soccer goes on.  The kids are fine; the parents are not.  They yell at their children from the sidelines.  They reprimand them for not being aggressive enough.  They give me dirty looks when I clap for the *other* team when they score (because, dude?  It's six and under and there's barely any rules.  The kids are trying and it's a good job reaching the damn net at all).  I clap when our team scores, too, but I don't feel the need to denigrate a gaggle of 5 and 6 year olds just because they scored against us.

The longer this goes on the more I hope that Liam loses his love of the game.  I'd rather be a dojang Mom any day of the week.  It's just so . . . suburban.  Or, more accurately, suburban nightmare.  I'm all for kids learning that not everyone is awesome and not everyone gets a trophy and how to be a good sport but this is U-6 soccer - most of these kids have never played the game before and it just isn't important at this age to be so damn competitive.

7.  Otherwise, life is life.  I clean the house, I run children to school, I pick kids up off the bus.  There's play dates and grocery shopping and bills.  One of these days there will be time for me - I begin to see a glimmer of those days but it's a faint glow on the distant horizon.  We'll get there.  Eventually.