Re-entering the blog

Wow, I just realized that I kind of gave up on blogging the last half of last year, and then sort of forgot about it over the summer.

I find that sometimes in the craziness of life, I feel the overwhelming need to word-vomit on the computer screen just to get my feelings out.  When I feel a little isolated, or down in the dumps.  I think that was where I was when I started this thing.

Life has taken some crazy turns since the beginning of school.  My little baby is not a little baby.  She has officially moved into the PreK side of daycare in the 3-year-old room.  She has a great new teacher who has high expectations for behavior.  She needs that.  We have been dealing with waves of rebellion.  All of my great ideas for behavior, she just wasn't ready to work with last year.  However, I think pretty soon we are going to try some of it again.  I would love to say that I will be truly consistent, but I know there will be busy times when that will slip.  Main thing, KISS, keep it simple stupid.  I have a tendency to over-do and then have to back-pedal.

Also, her language abilities and comprehension of what we say has exploded.  I knew she would have her father’s gift of gab… and gift of spinning yarns.  She has already spread a crazy story at daycare that she has another house and a sister.  Don’t worry, we’ve worked on that one, but she had to learn the word IMAGINARY in order to explain herself.

My amazing colleagues, Julie and DeeAnn, have started up the Trojan Children’s Choir.  We kept the KISS model in mind, and were very specific with the title so that all would understand that in these infant stages, we want to nominate kids that we know already from our North Andover feeder schools, but eventually, we would love to expand it into an Andover Community Children’s Choir.  Remember, Mrs. Berry, baby steps.

I hate that it’s happened, but I have had to scale back my involvement in Church choir and Singing Quaker Alumni Choir.  Not completely, but for the first time, I am giving myself permission to take it easy.  After the first week of managing TCC, church choir, SQAC, and teaching all day, I completely lost my voice and my zeal.  It’s been a downhill slide since then, culminating in a total body shutdown with a nasty sinus infection.  I will still be there, once I am feeling well again, but I’ve got to learn to chill out at school… The kids need the calm side of me.  I NEED THE CALM SIDE OF ME.  I need to rejoice in our time together, and learn how to manage our time better.  And QUIT WORRYING ABOUT STUFF I DON’T CONTROL.

However, taking it easy has in turn made me feel really isolated the last few weeks.  I miss my music friends.  And I hate to say it, but I don’t really feel like they miss me.  And THAT IS TERRIBLE.  My head says, “Of course they miss you.  They’re busy too, ya know.”  My heart says, “It’s your own fault for not being around.  If you were around, you would be relevant.”  Stupid heart, quit second guessing everything.

Happy New Year!  We celebrated last night by studying the insides of our eyelids and trying to ignore all of the fireworks going off in our neighborhood.  Seriously, people?

I won't lie, though, we felt a little lame for staying in, especially when we were invited out for roller skating... Daddy and I both agreed that we were just too tired to be much fun.  Christmas festivities here and in Iowa are enough to take the energy out of nearly anyone.  Miss Aislinn is still a ping-pong ball though... I don't know how she does it.

Miss Aislinn has been a cheeky little devil the last few days.  Her vocabulary has kind of exploded the last few weeks.  She is constructing sentences at least 3-4 words long.  She knows her ABCs and can sing it all the way through unaccompanied.  She's got several other songs pretty much under her belt, but the words are a bit fuzzy here and there.  Pretty sure I've got a budding Soprano on my hands... heaven help me!

She's also been fighting this nasty bum-bum infection again.  She had it worse over Thanksgiving.  We went to the doctor, got antibiotics and antiseptic cream.  That cleared it completely in just a few days.  But she's got it again.  Urgh.  We went to the doctor yesterday and he said that since she got it once, she is prone to it now.  He was very reassuring, though that it's not because she's excessively dirty, but tiny things could set it off again.  Yay.

Potty training... nada.  We had hoped to do some more consistent work this week, but now that we're treating her bum, I think we'll wait.  I'm still not sure she's ready.  She's not consistently waking up from naps with dry diapers yet.  Mommy just needs to chill out and let her learn at her own pace.  I guess since she did so many other things early, I figured that would come quickly as well.  One glimmer of hope is that she has become obsessed with "chang-a-diaper"ing all of her stuffed animals and dolls.  I just keep telling her that babies need their diapers changed, but big girls learn to go on the potty.

It's back to work and school later this week, so we must soak up as much family time and fun time as we can!  Daddy bought tickets to go see Cirque-du-Soleil on Friday :)  Love him.