I left my heart at Kindergarten

One of my Preschoolers became a KINDERGARTENer this week!

Seesa is in the same classroom as two of her best girlfriends! How freaking cute would it be if these three stay friends for a long time, and can look back on this picture of their first day of Kindergarten together? Maybe post it on their blogs? Unless blogging is totally uncool at that point, you know, because Mom does it.

The school has a new Principal, and he's awesome. He starts each day with all the classes congregating on the playground for the Pledge of Allegiance, some stretches and some motivation. Check out this crowd on the first day!

Seesa's teacher gave them all teddy bears for the first day, but they couldn't take them home yet. I asked her at the end of the week, if they could take them home yet. Seesa said "No. We can't take them home until everyone stops crying." Ha! How funny is that? I guess there's still one holdout...

There were no tears from Seesa though. She was over the moon to be starting Kindergarten, and loved her teacher so much that she insisted on buying her a book. We chose one about California, and Seesa was very specific about what she wanted for the inscription. I wrote it out, and she copied it into the book. It says "I love your class. And I love you. Go Eagles." The school mascot is an Eagle, and the girl is ready to FLY!!! My wish for her is that she will be this excited about school for many, many years to come.

Here is Milly (and "Camper Baby") on her first day of the 2009 Preschool Year. At least I've got a couple more years before I have to come up with a new name for my blog...

I've got a bad case of PVDS

I hate that I've had no inspiration to write lately, and little energy to even open my laptop in the evenings for some good blog reading.

After reading a recent post on Motherhood in NYC, I've self diagnosed that I have PVDS - Post Vacation Depression Syndrome. Here I am, back from a fabulous lake vacation with my family, and I'm feeling inexplicably down. Thanks to Marinka, instead of walking around wondering what the hell my problem is, I can finally attribute it to a fake real illness.

Here are some other things I'm hating on lately...

I hate that it didn't feel like a real summer because the weather was so wacky and unseasonably cool.

I hate that we're in this hazy zone in between spontaneous summer fun and the scheduled predictability of the school year.

I hate that my husband just told me he thinks Seesa needs a new lunchbox, and I've got exactly one day to get her a new one before she starts her first day of Kindergarten, or just go with the old - apparently sub par - one.

I hate that it seems like I'm the last one in the office in the mornings and the first one out at night, and it makes me feel guilty every.single.day. In the words of MommyGeekology, being a working Mother sucks donkey balls.

I hate that even though I get out of the office as soon as humanely possible, and drive home as fast as the law will allow, I still find myself rushing to get dinner ready as soon as I walk in the door while listening to my girls cry about being s t a r v i n g.

I hate that I just found out that the city is about to start work on a span of roadway from the bridge I travel across into the city that I work in that will be completed sometime in late 2012, that is going to make my commute EVEN LONGER while the work is going on with all the detours.

I hate that it takes an act of God to do any activity in the evenings during the weekdays. Classes for my kids, dinner with family or friends, or just going to the park takes major coordination and even then, is not uncommonly derailed by work emergencies or traffic.

I hate that we missed half of the pre-Kindergarten playdates this summer, because some were scheduled during the day, during the week - making it impossible for families with two full time working parents to attend.

I hate that there are so few families with two working parents in our neighborhood... and in Marin... and in the Bay Area... and sometimes it feels like everywhere!

I hate that I sometimes get jealous of my Mom friends who have a choice about whether or not to work outside the home.

I hate that I get impatient with my kids when I'm stressed out.

I hate that as much as I try not to let it affect me and to just do the best I can and know that whatever happens, things will work out one way or another - I'm still varying degrees of freaked out about the future of my job and the changes it will bring, no matter what happens.

I hate that there's never enough time to spend with my friends.


But...I love that I have an outlet in blogging. I can take all my frustrations, get them out of my head, figuratively tear them up into a million little pieces and blow them into the wind. Despite the list that precedes this, and almost being in tears trying to get dinner ready this evening, just the thought of typing out this post after the kids are in bed was enough to help me take a deep breath, get the kids to help me with dinner and enjoy the time that I had with them before tucking them in for the night.

That. Is worth its weight in gold.

Happy Blogaversary to me!

It's my one year blogaversary, and I got myself a little something for the occasion...
a new blog design!

I think Nap Warden did a fantastic job designing my new look, and I'm really happy with it. I'm still reorganizing everything, and populating my tabs, but check it out and let me know what you think!

Liveblogging my vacation

We are on vacation at Bass Lake this week with my sister's family. It's a week I've been looking forward to since we left our vacation at Bass Lake last year. Today, I decided to liveblog a day of our vacation. Or I guess more like "livejournal" the day, to later type into a blog post, because I couldn't really take my laptop on the boat, at least not without repercussions...

6:45am - Kids wake up. Ok, somebody please tell me at what age do kids get the concept of sleeping in on vacation?

6:48am - Try to figure out rental cabin's TV remote for some cartoons for the kids, and possibly a bit more sleep for the parents. Never give up hope, I say.

7:12am - Finally get one of the TVs to work and get a show rolling for the kids.

7:13am - Decide to fire up my PC, now that I'm wide awake. At least I can relax and surf the internet a little while the kids watch a show.

7:15am - Start hearing chimes of "I'm hungry!"

8:15am - Everyone is fed, kids are playing puzzles and discussing what they want to be when they grow up. Professions include Mommy, Chef, Pet Doctor and Big. Who knew "big" was a profession?

8:30am - Read a comment on my latest post. Wonder if I alienated anyone who might have been offended by the word cunt. Too late now.

8:40am - Get sucked into reading blogs, and start to run out of distractions for the kids. Decide we better start getting ready to go out on the boat.

8:45am - Get mooned by my brother-in-law while attempting to ask my sister what we should pack for lunch.

10:10am - Kids dressed, sunscreen applied, cooler loaded, bags packed, ready to go. Yes, it took that long.

10:30am - Unload 10 floatation devices, 7 beach chairs, 1 beach umbrella, 25 sand toys and 5 kids onto the beach.

10:35am - Mooned again by my brother-in-law because he knows I'm liveblogging and wants to be included in the post.

10:36am - Realize that I forgot to put my own sunscreen on.

11:00am - Get a call on my cell phone, that I only have with me so I can log the time for these insane entries. It's Jessica, so I'm happy that I had my phone with me. She cracks me up, then we get back to swimming.

11:30am - The Dads take Seesa, Sejal and Jayne for a swim across the cove. Now's my chance to sit down for a few minutes of uninterrupted time. Nope. Milly needs to poop. Portable potty is really just for kid's who need to pee, and Milly is wearing a swim diaper that I can just change...so we just do this.

1:30pm - Load up floaties, chairs, umbrella, toys and kids for a cruise around the lake. Kids and parents take turns riding in, as Raj called it, the "Salami Blaster". There's a joke there somewhere, I'm just too tired to think of what it is.

3:00pm - Dock the boat back at the cabin, and take a swim in the cove.

3:45pm - As I'm enjoying a moment with Seesa riding with me on a floatie, she announces "I just peed on Mommy!" Nice.

3:50pm - Back in the cabin for baths and showers.

4:00pm - Give the girls french braids after their baths. This is one of the best parts of my vacation, having the time to leisurely style my kids' hair without rushing through one routine after another.

6:30pm - Dinner was fantastic, kids are playing quietly on the upper deck of the cabin, and the parents are sitting around the table talking about how nice it is that the kids play more independently now, and how much easier it is as they are getting older. Dundundundun...famous last words.

6:45pm - Jayne comes down and suspiciously asks for some water, followed by Seesa walking in with writing on her face and arms. What the??? We quickly learn that the kids decided to draw on Seesa and Milly, the extent of which we only discovered after putting them in the bath. They had graffiti all over their bodies. Jayne seemed to be the primary artist, as "Jayne Rocks" was scrawled across Seesa's tummy, and Milly donned "Bass Lake on her chest. I was dying to take a picture of it, but my husband thought that would send the wrong message. Whatever.

7:00pm - Kids are re-bathed and headed to bed. In separate rooms. Without dessert.

7:30pm - Parents sit down on the couch and laugh our asses of about the body graffiti. Break open another bottle of wine. Roast some s'mores (sorry kids). Turn on a movie.

If you got to this point, God bless you. I guess this is why people line up guest posts for their vacations. So readers don't have to be subjected to the blog equivelent of the family vacation pictures slideshow.

Good night!

Mrs Potato Head is a c*nt

Alternate title: Calling all people with a Mrs. Potato Head fetish to my blog.

I actually scribbled out this post on the plane ride home from BlogHer, but I've had a migraine (or maybe it's a BlogHer hangover?) since the day I got back two weeks ago that has kept me from doing really anything besides just getting through the day - and night. I finally dragged myself to the doctor recently, and while I have yet to hear the results of the series of tests my doctor put me though, she did thankfully give me a prescription for some hard core pain relievers. Between that, and following the instructions of my best friend Lisa, who is a Physical Therapist - I'm finally starting to feel like myself again. Now, if only Lisa lived closer to me, and could come over and give me some massages...

By now, you've no doubt read more than your share of BlogHer recaps, so I'll be surprised if anyone even gets this far into this post. And if you have, you're probably just hoping I'll get to the Potato Head story. I could write a lot about my great weekend at BlogHer, but the one thing that highlighted the entire conference for me happened five minutes after my sister and I arrived at the hotel in Chicago.

We had just checked in when I noticed a small group of women sitting in the lobby that I recognized from their blogs. We went over to say hi, and it was not at all like I imagined meeting people that I had never actually talked to or seen in person would be like. It was more like catching up with friends that I'd known for a long time. There was an immediate camaraderie. I was so comfortable, that I ended up giving our room key to a couple of the women who needed a place to stash their stuff until they checked in. They were probably thinking, "who is this chick, and how does she know we're not axe murderers?" And then, "wait a minute, how do we know she's not an axe murderer!" Or maybe they felt the same way I did. The same way I felt with practically every person that I met that weekend.

I want to say THANK YOU to Kirsten, Issa, Renee, Christy, Stacey, Marinka, Jessica, Maura, Caitlin, Flappy, Greis, Andrea, Matt, Ben, Andrea, Kendra and every blogger I had the opportunity to meet, even briefly. Thank you for welcoming me as your friend. Thank you for connecting with me as a fellow writer. Thank you for opening my mind to the transformational power of blogging. Thank you for feeding my soul. Thank you for helping me find my voice. Thank you for making me laugh - and laugh and laugh and laugh. YOU made my weekend!

One of the small things I did do this past couple weeks of pain, was upload the pictures from my weekend at BlogHer so I could send them to all my new BFFs. My husband and I were watching TV on the couch while I was getting my pictures onto Flickr, and a character in the show said something to the effect of "...and then she called me the c word", at just about the same time that I was uploading the following picture:


Simultaneously, my husband was glancing over at this picture on my screen, and said to me "what's that?" To which I replied "c*nt". He stared at the picture for a moment before saying, "what do you have against Mrs Potato Head???"

...and thus, the title of this post was born.


p.s. If you took one of my blog cards at BlogHer, and tried unsuccessfully to find me on Twitter, I listed the wrong Twitter ID on my cards. It's @KariHeart. But I never tweet, so don't bother following me if you are expecting to actually communicate with me that way.