An Even Dozen

Somehow the clock ticked right by number 11 and struck midnight.

I have been sadly absent from this blog for a while, but I'm determined to pick it back up and let it carry some memories through time so that I will remember life's little - and big - moments far into the future.

Last year my oldest daughter turned 11 and this blog was left waiting. Now she turns an even dozen years old, and I'm compelled to capture it in writing once again. So much has happened, and yet so much remains the same.

She's still singing her way through her days, only now it seems to be with more volume and gusto. Or maybe it just feels that way sometimes.

She's still a very responsible and caring young lady. She helps around the house (now being the official owner of chores), she tends to her younger siblings much to their delight, and she is always on time, ready to go before just about anyone else in the house.

And yet other things have changed. While she's always enjoyed venturing out into the world and discovering friends and fun moments in life, now she seems to be spending more time "out there" than inside the house. Her school days are long, and her weekends are spent hanging out with friends as much as she can possibly squeeze into her - and our - schedule.

She's in middle school now, and she's walking the line between the safe comfort of her family and home, and the excitement of a new social world that includes BFFs, fashion fascinations, instagram, and school dances. But she still knows that no matter how much fun she has "out there", there's always her family waiting anxiously to welcome her return to our home.

Another new thing this year has been the addition of a cell phone into her life. Much to her father's chagrin, her face is often glowing with that familiar blue haze from her iPhone, and her eye contact has been much more limited. Her laughs and chatter are still there, but often they are directed at no one in particular as she reads something silly, or we find out she's not actually talking to us but instead to a friend on the other end of her phone. We often get "shushed" in the name of cinematography as she captures her own life through videos that she authors and edits with surprising savvy.

Even with that difficult task of balancing this whole process, she handles it all beautifully. She respects our rules and embraces our good old fashioned fun. She shares her knowledge of all things virtual, and never hides or lies about anything (as far as I know!). There is no eye-rolling or heavy sighs; if she's upset about something she walks away and takes time to herself, or openly talks (and cries) about it with me. And through our talks she quietly learns from my soft lectures and shared life lessons, often surprising me when she recites back the things I try to teach her as she finds her way down the path of life.

To put it simply, we couldn't be more proud of how gracefully our oldest child is aging.

 So here's to you, my sweet child, as you celebrate an even dozen.

• May you always embrace the sweet music of life, harmonizing with it's melodies and raising the volume when the passion strikes you.
• May you always take life seriously enough to be responsible and on time, but never so much that you no longer laugh at the silly moments with those near and dear to you.
• May you always listen quietly, talk openly, and learn swiftly.

Next stop...teenager.

Double Digits Baby

Today marks a full decade of life for my oldest daughter.

A decade. TEN years.

It doesn't sound like that old for an age. But in and of itself, it's a long time. A lot can happen in ten years. And a lot has, especially for her.

We have so enjoyed watching over her as she has found her way through those years. From making her first friend to having her first sleepover. From learning her ABCs to powering through the Harry Potter series. From hanging on to me at every good-bye to being ready to go to school before I'm even ready to leave the house.

Now she wants her own email address, calls to schedule time with friends, and makes herself her own snacks. Her growing independence is s source of great pride and sadness all at once. It means

new endeavors. New challenges. More successes, but inevitable failures. And in it all a whole lot of life lessons.

So far those lessons have taught her how to be a very caring and thoughtful girl. She helps out her younger siblings and even her friends. Her teacher has remarked that she is always someone to be counted on to help out in class and not complain if he pulls her away from something to lend a hand or to help make a situation more fair for all the kids involved.

And those ten years have also taught her to be embrace life's littlest moments. No matter where or when she can be heard singing a song, humming along in happiness. And what other people may call trash, she calls an opportunity for a new piece of art. Her creativity has clearly taken the lead in her life. Singing, music, art. Anything that lets her express herself in her own terms.

And now she is working on finding her own voice, and then listening to it. She has learned that she has the tendency to agree to things simply to make someone else happy, even if its something she doesn't want to do. She is learning that she has to be the one to find her own happiness and that it doesn't only come through making others happy.

To my oldest child. Here are my 10th birthday wishes for you.

• May you always be kind to others, taking the high road even when others try to lead you down the other path.
• May you always seize the day and always find something to sing about.
• May you always be able to give a voice to your inner needs and desires, learning that through your happiness you will also find a joy in making others happy.

Welcome to double digits, baby.

Marching On

I really need to get back into writing. I miss it so. The long list of things to do just keeps getting longer, and I really do think we all need to revisit those things that live at the bottom of our lists.

Those tend to be the things we should do the most. The more meaningful things that give us that shot in the arm that we need to start working our way down the list again, starting with the neediest items that we don't want to do but have to do. Those items that take up all our time so we never actually get to the bottom of the list.

Maybe I'll cut my long list into single items, put them in a bucket, and pick them out randomly. After I finish one I get to pick another. And then it's up to fate which ones get done every day.

I need to think about that some more. I think I might be on to something there.

I also need to think about my kids more. Which was the point of this blog when I started it.

It's time for a little catch up.

While things have changed around here, a lot has remained the same.

My oldest is still flittering about in the clouds most days, much like she has over the last several years. I admire her for it really. She has a beautiful mind that keeps growing and expanding and wrapping itself around life's most creative moments. In any given hour you will find her singing her way through her homework or the shower. Or through getting dressed or cleaning up. Or just about through anything these days. And she's now writing her own songs in a book. Perhaps you'll see it on MTV one day in the story of her musical life.

She's often found taking random items, which would otherwise be trash to me, and turning them into treasures. Boxes, bags, paper tubes, what have you. They become beds, homes or accessories for the little creatures in her life that are embodied by her stuffed animals. She's learning more about herself every day, and more about life too. She's really growing up into a beautiful young lady, inside and out.

And yet she still believes in Santa and the Easter Bunny. I hope that lasts a while longer, but I fear it won't.

Our younger daughter has changed the most over the past year or two. She's finally found her voice. She went from the quiet and shy girl that barely said "boo" to anyone, to the little spunky girl that now requests playdates and sleepovers and doesn't want to be picked up from after care.

Although the down side to this is the adjustment that we've all needed to make. She went from radio silence to a blaring bull horn that demands to be heard. Which, as you might imagine, can make for a rough transition for mom and dad. And teachers. I've always tried to "catch" my kids while being good. But I'm thinking maybe we didn't catch her often enough, being the one that was so quiet and sweet, and now she's going to make us catch her one way or the other.

It's not that bad. Just loud. And full of passion. She can be too quick to fly off the handle at all of us. But I think it's an expression of everything she's been holding in for so long. She never learned how to express herself in the right way. Now she's flooded with things to say and needs to learn how to process and sensor it all before it comes out. And that's a tough thing to learn. And to teach. But we're working on it.

In other areas she's still the same sweet girl she always has been. Loves to be outside. Chooses physical activity over screen time almost any day. Still so loving and caring to her little brother. And incredibly responsive to positive attention from her older sister. She craves that attention and we're working on getting more of it for her these days.

Now my youngest is probably the one that still rides the same waves. He's still a blur of activity and motion. Still can chatter away about the inane. Still loves to love. The spontaneous "I love you"s and hugs and kisses just melt me every time.

That boy's got my number. Quite frankly he's so damn adorable that he's got a lot of numbers these days. And I see a lot of that in his future too. Digits. Gonna get lots of digits.

It's fun to watch him learn and grow. He still loves to keep up with his big sisters. In fact he painted his own nails the other day.

And he just about refuses to go to sleep without his big sister in the room with him where she usually sleeps. Which will be more difficult to manage if we start getting her the sleepovers she's looking for these days.

As always, we are enjoying the laughs, we are annoyed by the annoyances, and we are relishing every loving moment we can get.

We continue to take deep breaths at the end of every day, because we know that no matter what time marches on. Sometimes with loud thunderous stomps, and sometimes with quiet little steps. But it's marching nonetheless.

Nine is Devine

Today is the 9th anniversary of when I became a mother. It also happens to coincide with my daughter's 9th birthday, for those of you keeping track.

I honestly can't believe that nine years have passed since my husband and I first took on parenthood. Sure, you could say that it was 9 years and 9 months ago, but really, let's all face it. You aren't a parent until there are tears that you have to dry and bottom that you have to wipe.

So now here we are. Deep into parenthood with all its joys and fears. And I have to say that it's a pleasure that we get to experience so many firsts with my oldest. This past year had a few of them.

For every trip we have taken on an airplane this year, we had the joy of hardly noticing our oldest was with us. This was the first year that she packed her own bag, rolled it through the airport, stowed it away, and then kept herself busy the entire trip. Every time. In fact, being that we have the odd number of people in our family, and that most of our trips were in smaller planes that only had 2 seats on either side, many times this past year our oldest sat in a row by herself, usually immediately in front or behind me. Like I said, we hardly noticed she was with us. Especially since she would charm her way into chatting or playing a game of hangman with her neighbor.

And speaking of charming her way into people's lives, this year is the year of the first crush. According to her chitter chatter with her friends there's a certain boy that "likes" her in school. This also happens to be the boy that she mentions quite a bit, so I figured maybe she had a crush on him as well. I was proven correct when I went in to her parent/teacher conference last month and the teacher raved all about her, and then said, "but". She followed it with a statement that everything was great until about 2 weeks prior when she started not listening well, giggling too much and seemingly getting into other peoples' business for no reason. When the teacher was telling me this a lightbulb went off in her eyes and she said she thought it must be the new seat assignments. At that very moment my lightbulb went off and I inquired who she was sitting next to. You guessed it. He who shall not be named was in the cluster of desks. It was official. And when I mentioned my inside information to the teacher she was quite relieved. As was I since I was starting to wonder what catastrophe she could have been processing during those past two weeks of poor behavior, or what lecture I gave her that sunk too deep in her heart. Thank goodness it's just those little kiddie hormones.

Another first this summer was that we have our first child that wants to ride the roller coasters - and every other ride at the parks - over and over. And over. By herself. Thank goodness, since nobody wants to see my husband or I hurl as we exit a ride for the 3rd time.

Most recently we had our first sleepover party. My daughter wanted to invite all her friends over for a pajama party and then asked if some of the could sleep over. After much discussion, we decided to just jump in with both feet and invited them all. 16 kids were invited. Thankfully only 8 could spend the night. So for the first time my husband took cover with our younger two at a friends house and my daughter and I had a good old fashioned sleepover party with the house to ourselves. We painted nails, made bracelets and pillows, hosted a pajama fashion show, sang karaoke, and then took in a double feature. The girls were great and I was incredibly proud of how well my daughter behaved herself the entire time. Even the next morning when they starting running amuck again. She was very generous the entire time, and was conscious of being fair to everyone at the party and not playing any favorites. She seemed to just be genuinely happy to have her posse over and exist in the midst of all that girly girl fun.

The firsts are only just beginning. For her and for us. I'm just glad we get to learn from it all before we do it again with our younger kids. It benefits them as well as us. So I'm thankful for my oldest being our host into the world of parenting.

This is my birthday wish for you this year, my hostess with the mostest.

May you always live independently and know that you are the keeper of your own happiness.

May you always love with an open heart and embrace all the joy that entails, while taking the aches in stride.

May you always enjoy a good roller coaster and the freedom of soaring through the air.

May you always cherish your girl friends, giving generously to their lives and appreciating all the happiness they bring you.

Happy 9th birthday my love.

Peek-a-boo!

Here I am. Over here. No. Here. Over this way. There you go. You found me.

Allow me to re-introduce myself. My name is Jessica. Still have 3 kids. And a wonderful husband. Everyone is still healthy. Life is moving on. Just sadly without the weekly (okay...semi-monthly) bits of wisdom being blogged into history.

My last post was in July, so let me catch you up.

August was an electrical storm in my life. Too much going on, swirling around our family of five, and it's no wonder to me that it set off the four month drought in my journaling. A tad bit of crazy. A dash of fun. Mix in a little mayhem.

Then September started and we've been able to fold in a little stability. I'm working more now so I have the kids doing some after-care. Read more about the working mom guilt later.

Seriously, I will write more about it. Later.

There is always later.

So for your reading pleasure, and for my nostalgia keeping purposes, here are some highlights from the past few months. They've been swirling around my mental blog so that I wouldn't forget them. Since that's really the whole point of this exercise. I don't want to forget all the little bits of fun that visit us every day, but that we never seem to remember when we are so exhausted at the end of the week...or month...or quarter. So here goes.

My son while riding a bus full of girl scouts ages 6 to 16, who are busting out songs as per the girl scout tradition: "When I grow up I want to sing just like dem. I want to be one of dem."

One of the girl scouts in my troop during my volunteer counselor stint, after her friend noted that I have pretty eyes: "Yeah. You do. You must have been really pretty when you were younger." Ah, thanks. That's so...sweet of you?

A 9 year old boy at the park who came up to us seemingly out of nowhere and inquired about my oldest daughter: "Does she come here a lot? Like every Tuesday? Do you guys live around here?" And then he just walked away after we gave him some confused looks. As was pointed out by my friend and completely missed by me, this would be my daughter's first experience of "do you come here often?". Thankfully this was completely missed by her as well. Still hanging on to the innocence.

My oldest on the first morning of school, after I suggested a hair clip for her that I thought was really cute: "I don't want to look cute mom, I want to look cool." My younger daughter's retort: "Do you want to look cool, or do you want to be cool?" Older daugther's response: "I already am cool." So much for the innocence.

My oldest - almost 9 year old - daughter commenting about the wonder of Santa Claus: "I can't believe how busy he is and how he can get presents all over the world." My younger - almost 6 year old - daughter's voice of reason: "Maybe that's because he's not real." My oldest: "Well I know that the ones at the mall aren't the real one. Everyone knows that little sister." My younger daughter: "Maybe there is no Santa big sister." Oldest: "Yes there is! I believe in him." I can't say enough how this depicts their personalities. My oldest is up in the clouds, forever creating and dreaming, and my younger daughter has her feet firmly planted on the ground with no funny stuff.

And by far some of my most favorite quotes lately have come from my son. He's been known to punctuate every day with frequent occurences of this scenario. Him: "Mom! Mooooommmy!?" Me after finding him: "Yes hon?" Him: "I love you" Me: " I love you too sweetie" Him: "I love you sooooo much!" and then he follows it up with a wet peck on the lips. Or occassionally we'll be walking somewhere and he'll just grab my hand and give it a kiss. No words. Just pure love.

He is definitely the lover in the group. He brings love into all of our lives and keeps it present.

So this year on Thanksgiving (that'd be today), I'm thankful for all those little moments in life. Because when we look at our lives as a whole I could say that not too much has happened in the past 4 months. And for that I'm also thankful.

Nothing dreaded. Nothing wounding. Just life.

Full of lots of fabulous little moments that I don't want to forget and for which I hope I am always grateful.