We made it through the holidays and have started the new year off well. Lauren and Dylan are doing great in school and Joe's job is going as well as can be expected. My private practice is slow, but with this economy, I'm not surprised. I am hanging in there, though. I did complete my training to become a MOCSA (Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault) advocate last week. This has been a big goal of mine for a long time, and it is an issue that is very near and dear to my heart. I have seen too many lives and too many families destroyed by rape and sexual abuse, and I really wanted to do something about it. You can find out more about them at http://www.mocsa.org/. I will be traveling to local hospitals providing crisis intervention to sexual assault victims. I am excited and terrified about this new path in my life.
We recently did an inventory of the kids' shoes, because each of their closets were beginning to resemble a black hole into which shoes would disappear and never return. Joe laid all the shoes out in the hallway for us to go through. I have to say, it was quite an interesting sight. Notice that there are TWO pairs of pink cowgirl boots.
That is a lot of shoes.
Even though I seem to have inadvertently encouraged shoe-hoarding behavior in my children, I had a very proud parenting moment yesterday. Joe has been sick this week, and that means single parenting for me. I didn't feel like cooking at all, so I decided I'd take the kids to McDonald's on the way to Tae Kwon Do. When our budget issues were different, my kids were getting to be pretty entitled about going out to eat, and definitely not appreciating it. If they went somewhere with fast food, they expected a Happy Meal/Kids meal of some sort. Then they wouldn't drink the drink in the meal, only half the food would get eaten and the stupid toy would end up on the floor of the car. So I quit taking them and gave them some stupid speech about how they don't appreciate things, McDonald's is a privilege, etc.
Last night I announced very casually, "Well, we need to get moving if we want to go to McDonald's before Tae Kwon Do." THEY WERE SO EXCITED. They were jumping up and down with joy! When we went to McDonald's and I didn't buy them Happy Meals, they each got something off the dollar menu, they split small fries and they both drank water. But they were so thrilled just to be able to go through that drive through and eat McDonald's. It was so cool to see that I'd finally returned that excitement about something so small back to their lives.
As some of you know, Lauren is very particular about her hair. She doesn't like barrettes, ponytails, pigtails, braids... none of it. So imagine my surprise when she asked me to style her hair like this:
I can't decide if she looks more like Napoleon Dynamite's Girlfriend or Chrissy from Three's Company.
In my never-ending quest to be crowned Mother of the Year, I caused Lauren to get a fat lip. You see, she and I like to pretend we are in the Cirque Du Soleil. I balance her on my feet, I spin her around, bounce her from my feet to my ankles... it's quite a spectacle. I like to think of it as a wonderful use for my gigantic, muscular, tree trunk legs. One night we were practicing the very thrilling and dangerous one-footed balance. It looks like this:
The one-footed balance on tree trunk legs.
We have an agreement that if she feels like she is going to fall, she is to fall ON me. Well, that is a nice theory. About 2 seconds after this picture was taken, she grabbed the coat rack in front of her and pulled the entire thing down on top of both of us. Yes, I know. It was irresponsible of me to be practicing these exciting, intricate and dangerous acts so close to the coat rack. But we are REALLY good! Aside from the fat lip, she was okay. We were thankful that it wasn't worse! I think our Cirque Du Soleil days are over, unless I can get her to come back and practice on the trampoline. Imagine what we could do on a trampoline!
I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day.
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