Stress over the holidays? Naw...

It's well after midnight and I've been lying in bed for at least half an hour, but it feels like much longer. I'm tired, but nowhere near falling asleep. Usually when this happens, there are about five dozen things that I am thinking about that absolutely positively need to be done ASAP, but I've decided that I need sleep even more than I need to get them done. Tonight, no such worries. Was it the Coke that I drank right before bed that is now keeping me up? Probably not since I've gone back to drinking way too much soda, and the caffeine is running through my veins at a pretty constant level.

I actually think I'm at a pretty good place right now in terms of my things-to-do list. My Christmas shopping is pretty much done, and almost all of the presents are even wrapped. I'm off from work for two weeks, and managed to get all of my reports done before leaving. Of course, there are some things that just didn't get done before I left Los Angeles with the boys to head home for the holidays (Chris will join us later). Like sweeping and mopping the floors so that the house would actually be clean when we return. Or writing my notes from work. Or our Christmas cards. I'm still hoping to get those done this week, though, even though I know it means many people probably won't actually receive them until after Christmas. Is that important? I don't know- it's something that I think really would have bothered me in the past. Which made me start thinking.

A friend that I hadn't seen in awhile was visiting recently during my absolutely most crazy busy week of this year. Which is saying a lot considering I feel like life has been pretty nonstop crazy since Jake started kindergarten this year. I was in the midst of organizing some continuing education courses for work, while juggling fundraising events and meetings at Jake's school, on top of my usual routine of work and caring for my kids. And on the first day of the series of three courses, it was pretty chaotic- the AV equipment wasn't doing what it was supposed to (even though I had checked everything out ahead of time, and it worked fine on the trial run), and the kids that were supposed to come for demos were calling out sick. Of course, everything was worked out, and the courses ended up going great. But I remember my friend asking about how I was doing it without appearing overly stressed. Basically, what she asked was, does having kids make you no longer "sweat the small stuff"?

The small stuff- like whether our Christmas cards arrive before or after Christmas? Whether or not my notes from September get finished by the end of the year? Whether over the holidays I put back on five of those 25 pounds I lost this year, and then have to work them back off when I get home? Are those the things keeping me up at night?

I don't know, I think there's just so much "stuff" that there's just not enough time to stress over all of it. I think having two kids and a busy schedule has helped me to learn how to multi-task even better than before. And how to prioritize. Like remembering to move our Elf on the Shelf to a new location for Jake to find in the morning. To put on the Phineas and Ferb Christmas CD and dance around the living room. To take the time to let Jake help wrap presents. His favorite part? Writing the "to" and "from" labels. But instead of just a simple label, he likes to write sentences on each package like, "I Love You. Jayden I hope You Have A Great Christmas. To Jayden Love Jake And Brody." All while slowly sounding out each word and confirming which letters spell what he's trying to say.

So no, I didn't really cross anything off my to-do list today. And I certainly wasn't a perfect mom making the most of every single moment. But all in all, I'd say that I am very much enjoying making some new holiday memories with my boys.

Saying Goodbye

There are moments when I consider whether or not I really want to be a parent. Does this make me a bad mom? Like this morning... I don't know why Jake was having a hard time getting ready for school. I just know that everything turned into an argument, no matter what I said. Maybe he was still tired. Maybe he's coming down with whatever caused me to lose my voice last week. Or maybe he's just not a morning person. All I know is that it was a struggle for him to get dressed, eat breakfast, put on shoes and get out the door. And don't even get me started on finishing up the last of his homework from this week- that's a whole other post for me to write. I think I even breathed a sigh of relief as I drove off this morning and Chris took Jake to school.

And then I got some news on my way to work. Earlier, I received an email from a teacher at one of the schools where I provide physical therapy services. Call me ASAP was all it said. Curious, I called her on my way in to the clinic.

"I have to give you some bad news," she said. It was about one of the children that I treat at school twice a week. He passed away on Wednesday. It was a complete shock to everyone, including his family. He had had health issues in the past related to his metabolic disorder. And he was in the hospital now due to some difficulties with his medications. But earlier this week, we still thought he was being released and would be back at school before the end of the week. His teacher didn't know the details- his mom was of course pretty shaken up when she talked to her yesterday. The teacher promised to forward me the details about the funeral arrangements when she knew more.

I hung up in shock, and I think I'm still there. My heart is breaking for his family and everyone who knew and loved him. He was only four years old.

Please hold your children tight and tell them that you love them today. Everything else seems trivial.

Menu Planning... Trying to get back into the routine

Last week was pretty good in that I managed to make dinner at home 5 out of 7 nights. Which was exactly what I planned for, so I'd call that a success! Especially since before that, I've been averaging only one to two meals a month cooked at home.

I learned from my friends on Facebook that maybe everyone else doesn't do as great of a job of cooking at home every night that I think they do. After my post about struggling to make dinner one night, some wrote that they were having pizza delivered, eating Chinese food, or having hot dogs at Target. And others had good suggestions to make it a little easier- crockpot cooking, making breakfast for dinner, having frozen pizza on hand, making soup/chili ahead of time, or using a meal planning website. Great suggestions! My go-to easy meal is usually something from the frozen section at Trader Joe's. They have yummy orange chicken, frozen meatballs (for sandwiches or to throw in pasta sauce), and lots of great frozen veggie combos. I recently sampled their frozen turkey meatloaf with mashed potatoes and ended up bringing those home, too (they're on the menu plan this week!). But for me, the biggest help is just planning ahead and then having the motivation to stick with it instead of having Chris pick something up on his way home from work.

The part that I really didn't do well last week was the exercise plan. I didn't make it to the gym at all. There's so much going on during the week that it's too hard to fit in exercise in the mornings. And then on the weekends, there's always something else with the family that takes priority. For now, I'm going to take that off my list, and just focus on getting back into the cooking routine. Here's the dinner plan for this week:

Sunday: Stuffed peppers (since I didn't find time to make them last week)
Monday: Meatloaf "muffins" with mashed potatoes
Tuesday: Spiral pasta with vodka sauce
Wednesday: Chicken burritos
Thursday: Leftovers
Friday: Italian pasta soup and grilled cheese
Saturday: We're going to be busy all day, so we'll go out or pick something up for dinner

As long as I can make it to the grocery store by Tuesday, I think I can make it happen!

Meals and Exercise... I just need a plan

Tomorrow is Halloween. Which means that the end of the year is coming quickly. I love the holiday season, but it's always stressful- too much to do and not enough time.

I feel like I'm losing it lately. I find myself frustrated with the kids, annoyed that I'm not making time for exercising, and disappointed that I'm eating way too much unhealthy take-out food again. I know it's time to take a look back at my goals that I set for myself in March, but I'm afraid that I've slipped so far backwards that I'll feel like a failure.

I need to get back to blogging, because that was the one thing that made me accountable and helped me to stick to my plan. What changed that led me to stop blogging? Time. I picked up more hours at work, and at the same time I started volunteering at Jake's new school. A little bit in the classroom, but mostly with the parent organization supporting the school. My job: fundraising. Which is basically a full-time job in and of itself. The school needs money in order to get all of the programs off the ground that we want in our brand-new elementary: art, music, PE, library, garden, playground supplies, field trips, and a million other "extras" that no longer fit into the basic school budget. All of which are important, and all of which require money to get the programs up in running. If I'm going to lead the fundraising committee, I want to do it well. And that's one job where no matter how much time I devote to planning events, soliciting donations, writing grants, etc. etc. etc... there's always more that can be done.

I don't know if I can make the time to get back to blogging with any regularity. But I do know that if I don't do my menu planning, we end up eating out or picking up take out for almost every meal. So I'm going to try to start with that. And here's my plan for the week.

Breakfasts: Frozen waffles. I think we'll try to make to the Farmer's Market tomorrow morning to pick up some fruits so that we'll have some options.

Lunches: I'll have to see if I can make enough dinners to have leftovers available for lunches. Otherwise, I have some frozen meals stored up.

Sunday:

• Dinner: Pre trick-or-treating meal with friends. Not sure what we'll have yet. (Edit: Pizza)
• Exercise: Pilates Didn't make it

Monday:

• Dinner: Chicken Salad (made ahead of time on Sunday)

Tuesday:

• Dinner: Stuffed Peppers Chicken and Bacon Sub Sandwiches
• Exercise: Muscle strength class- trying out a new class at the gym Didn't make it

Wednesday:

• Dinner: French Dip Sandwiches with Sweet Potato Fries

Thursday:

• Dinner: Grilled chicken and frozen veggies
• Exercise: Muscle strength class (if I liked it on Tuesday), or maybe just treadmill Didn't make it

Friday:

• Dinner: Leftovers Chris and I got a babysitter and went out to dinner

Saturday:

• Dinner: Dinner out somewhere to celebrate eating in the rest of the week. Dude, if I actually cook dinner four nights in a row this week, it'll be a huge improvement over the last month or two. Edit: Leftovers.

Sunday: Daylight Savings Time Ends! And time to create another meal plan. Fingers crossed that I can stick with this one.  :)

Somebody Please Stop Time, So That I Can Catch Up

You may have noticed, I haven't been blogging much lately. (And if you haven't noticed, please don't tell me, you'll hurt my feelings.) It's been a month since I've posted anything at all, and two months since I posted anything much more than food/menu planning stuff. It's not that I haven't had anything to say, it's just that I haven't been able to figure out how to make time to write it. Don't know how to get back in the swing of things, but for now, this'll have to do. :)

Jake turned 5 last month. He had his last day of preschool a couple of weeks ago. And today he started Kindergarten. I realize in the grand scheme of things, this isn't really a big deal. Another birthday, another transition- he'll have many more of each. But for some reason, it feels like a pretty big deal. This is "real" school- no turning back now.

This was what Jake decided to wear to his preschool graduation. He might have been slightly overdressed, but man, what a cute kid.

And here is Jake, ready for school this morning. I'll spare you the later pictures of him, crying and clinging to mommy. Luckily, I was able to turn away so that he couldn't see my watery eyes (there were no pictures of that).

At the end of the day, he was smiling again and even said that he "sorta" liked it. My baby's growing up. One day down, 12-16 or more YEARS to go. Maybe I won't tell HIM that, just yet. I think I might just go cry myself to sleep now.

For posterity, here's Jake's account of the first day of school:

-Lined up, went to class. ("I cried a little in the morning. It was a new school and I was missing my old school. Some other kids cried a little, too.")

-Circle time- the teacher read The Kissing Hand and the kids put their nametags around their neck. Then they split into small groups to go through stations: Coloring and cutting out Chester the Raccoon from The Kissing Hand, Playdough (Jake made "a burrito and some spaghetti"), Making handprints with a heart-shaped sticker in the middle (their own kissing hand), and Reading books on your own.

-Snack time outside (Jake ate freeze dried strawberries), followed by a little play time on the small yard.

-Returned to class, another circle time. That may have been when Jake's teacher did a puppet show about Curious George and how he learns to "clean up his space." Or when the second teacher read It's Okay to Be Different. Or when the music teacher taught them about quarter notes and "one" notes (Jake sang "one" in different pitches for this. I have a feeling there was more to this, but the story got a little fuzzy around here.)

-Lunch happened sometime, too. Jake ate his goldfish. (Hey, I packed a sandwich and other things, but yes, that was all he ate for lunch.) Then more playtime on the small yard. Overall, I think he had a pretty good day. We'll see how tomorrow goes!

Menu Planning for the Week

Last week was supposed to be a recovery period for me, after the crazy busy week before. Instead, I used the week for a preschool clean up day, working, a parent-teacher conference, a fundraising meeting, a treasury meeting, more working including consulting at monthly clinic, Jake's 5-year check up, a quick speech screening for Jake, swim class that was cancelled after we were already at the gym (somebody pooped in the pool- not my kid!), more working, and dentist appointments for Chris and me. Not much time to rest and relax. And sadly, I didn't manage to squeeze in any exercise, either. Part of the problem was that I had meetings and appointments during all of my regular exercise times. And the other part was that my normal workout buddy was out of town, so I wasn't motivated to make exercise a priority. But this week is a new week, so I'm going to try to get back into the routine.

Breakfasts: Chris has been awesome to finally eat up almost all of the cereal in the house. Which apparently motivated him to buy two more boxes. And I have some granola that I need to finish off in order to do my part. I think I saw some frozen waffles that Chris also bought (yep, he did some grocery shopping- such a helpful guy!), so we'll be eating those, too.

Lunches: I'll have to work to generate some leftovers for lunches this week. It's been a bit of a stretch the last two weeks as I haven't been making meals quite as regularly as I was in previous weeks.

Sunday:

• Dinner: Pizzas from Fresh N Easy
• Exercise: Pilates

Monday:

• Dinner: Grilled steak, corn on the cob

Tuesday:

• Dinner: Chicken Bacon Subs with sweet potato fries
• Exercise: Spin class

Wednesday:

• Dinner: Leftovers

Thursday: Jake's birthday!

• Dinner: I need to talk to the birthday boy- we've invited friends over, so Jake and I will need to sit down and have a little menu planning session. Will report back later. :)
• Exercise: Kickboxing

Food Waste Friday... Three Days Late

It's Food Waste Friday (err, Monday, see The Frugal Girl for my inspiration), which means that it's time to post a picture of all of the food that I am throwing away this week. It's an effort to hold myself accountable for the food that I have wasted (while attempting to save money and do something better for the environment). View my first post on this topic to learn why this is important to me.

Turns out, I don't actually like the Cascadian Farms brand of raisin bran. I much prefer the good ol' fashioned Kellogg's Raisin Bran (two scoops!). I don't remember why- it was too bran-ny, not enough sugar on the raisins, or something like that, probably. All I know is, I got it, I tried one bowl, and I had a hard time making myself eat it again. I tried to pass it along to Chris, but even he didn't really want to eat it. So, it sat and it sat and it sat. And nobody ate it. And then Chris just tried a bite tonight and declared it inedible- soft, stale. Time to go! The good news, though, is that we did get through several other boxes of cereal without having to throw them out. We're now down to one box of granola with chocolate- what's not to like?