High Maintenance Mom

B started first grade on August 11 and N started his last year of preschool right after Labor Day. It's late September and we're still trying to adjust. Going to bed early is a struggle and with it comes difficulty getting up / out of the house in the morning. It's exhausting. We're trying to stick to a schedule to make life easier on everyone but it's hard to find time for soccer, homework, food shopping, cooking, and cleaning...

Tomorrow is B's last day of preschool. I've been excited about him moving on to kindergarten but I've had to temper my enthusiasm. About two or three months ago, B started to revert to behavior we hadn't seen in a while. There was loud roaring, hitting, and lots of crying. The teachers said it was due to anxiety about the upcoming change in their lives, something that hadn't occurred to me. Of course, now that B is fine, I'm beginning to see how much of our lives are going to change...

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Yesterday evening I attended another great seminar at GeoKids on conflict resolution. It's always conforting to hear that others have similar feelings and frustrations. The seminar begin with us listing our feelings about conflicts - anger, frustration, embarrassment, helplessness, challenged to communicate effectively, being judged by others, and a bad sense of deja vu when we watch our kids struggle with it. We then learned the first of the two big ideas I took away from the evening. Conflict resolution is social problem solving and needs to be approached in a similar way to learning how to do other tasks like putting together a jigsaw puzzle...

We had our parent-teacher conference with B's teachers today and I once again left thinking about how preschool development applied to adult interactions. When B started at GeoKids it was difficult to see how the Reggio Amelia (play-based) program was going to help our child when he entered school. Both the Pocket Physicist and I could be described as academic so I was fine with a play based program for the first few years but I wasn't sure how the program would compare with the local pre-K "academic" programs. Now that he's in preschool, I'm starting to get it...

The other night we had a GeoKids room meeting that was one of the best meetings I've attended. It started with a simple request, write down some of your favorite childhood play memories. Take a minute and think about yours. You don't have to write them down, but think about the things you did as a child. My memories involved building forts, jumping in leaves, climbing on anything we could find, and exploring. I found myself remembering more as others' mentioned their favorites activities. Memories of a next-door-neighbor we moved away from when I was six and memories of my new next-door-neighbor, who happens to be due with her first as I write this...

We started visiting zoos when our oldest turned one. It's a great way to learn about animals and a good walk. During B's second year, the flamingos at the SF Zoo built nests and laid eggs. We were all captivated and returned often to watch the new chicks grow. I tried to document it but missed some of the early stages. Last month we went to the San Diego zoo and saw flamingos and their chicks. We also found the San Diego Zoo Animal Library board book about baby flamingos that is perfect for talking about animal growth and families...

"No More Pacifier" is one of four new personalized books from Change is Strange. The series was created to help children deal with change in their lives and includes stories about going to school, having a baby, and having mommy and daddy leave on a trip. In "No More Pacifier" the mommy and daddy decide it's time for their daughter to give up her pacifier. They help her create a special box for it when she is not sleeping and she stops using it at her own pace...

I spent some time at Target comparing prices for Pampers with those from Amazon (see Pampers) and found Amazon to be more competitive even without their current sale. For a size 3 diaper the Amazon sale price works out to $0.22/diaper, their non-sale price is $0.24/diaper, and the best price I can find at our Target in Redwood City, CA is $0.26/diaper. See below for the rest of the prices plus links to buy the diapers from Amazon...