Feel Good Friday - All Things Fresh and New

A great blogger, The Girl Next Door Grows Up, used to do a Feel Good Friday link up every week, back when she had time to keep up her blog.  I miss it.  Her friend Lia Sophia Tomgirl kept it up for awhile, too, but it seems to have fizzled out.  It really made me think of the positives in my life, and I need to be encouraged to do that more often.  So I'm going to do it on my own this week (I tried to finish it up this morning but just couldn't quite wrap it up before I had to leave).  If you want to join in, just leave a comment with your link - I don't know how to do linky things and I don't have time to figure it out right this minute....

Here's five things that happened, or that I did, or that I saw, this week that qualify as "feel good" things.

1.  I started a new job, in food service at the local alternative high school.  It's where all the kids who "can't, for one reason or another, go to the regular high school" go.  That's how it was described to me.  It's a few kids with special needs and a lot of kids with shall we say, behavior problems.  It's never going to be boring.  I'll never have to go to work during a day the kids have off.  I'll never have to be there before or after school. 

This week was a little hectic and stressful, but I think we're just working through some first-week-of-school kinks.  And, I get paid.  I'm not just a volunteer, anymore.  Whee!

2.  The boys had a great first week of school, for the most part. There are a couple of new kids in their class and after a few hours of staring nervously at them, AJ actually requested to do an activity with them.  That's my boy! 

Zack is eating his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch every day (yay, he's eating something that regular kids eat....), and AJ is working on that.  He has to eat cereal right now for lunch, he can't manage the sandwich yet.  It's only the first week though, we'll work on that. 

Otherwise the notes from their teacher say that AJ has been testing, and "defiant."  That doesn't surprise me.  He's got a naughty streak, and will test boundaries every which way he can.  He's my little rebel, I guess.

3.  Aliza had a great week, too.  She is starting her 5th year in this elementary school (K thru 6th, and she just started 4th) and she knew her teacher a little beforehand, and she knows most of the kids in the class.  Made for the easiest first day of school ever.

Those aren't Christmas lights still strung around the deck.  They are.... first-day-of-school celebration lights.  Yep, that's it.

4.  I'm excited for Aliza's dancing year.  She's in a new group and will be having classes four times a week.  It'll be a total of seven and a half hours of dance instruction per week.  She is pumped for it. Today she wore her dance jacket to school, and reviewed for me all the competitions she's been in, which is where all the pins on the collar are from.  She won't have much time left over for basketball or any other sport, but she loves dance so for now, we'll keep it up, because I think it's very beneficial to her self esteem.

5.  The infamous pink shirt?  It's back.  Some things never change.

The Battle of the Bottle, Part II

We've decided to get down to business, and crack down on our bottle habit.  We are 7 years old, and bottles should have no place in our lives.

Zack is not accepting it all that well.

AJ is having a lot of sympathy pains.  He keeps coming over to rub Zack's back.  Then he looks at me and says "good boy."  I'm forever being prompted by these boys.  I'm not sure who is raising whom, some days.

I've put away the bottles, which is good, because Mark can't break down and give one to him.  And bad, because I know where they are, if I'm the one who breaks down.  I know, I know, I should throw them away and get them completely out of the house so it's not even an option to break down.  It's a crutch, though.  I will be as strong as I can be, but I don't know what's going to happen.  I can't throw away the crutch.  Yet.

We will see how the next few days go.

Zack has been carrying on with the pink shirt, as usual.

Today at school a little girl in Zack's class was wearing a brightly colored shirt, with butterflies on it.  Apparently Zack followed her around like a little puppy at recess.  Kept trying to touch her shirt.  The teacher explained to the girl that Zack's sister had a shirt just like it,   She said it was very cute and the girl was a good sport about it.  I hope so.  I hope it wasn't creepy.  Here at home, or in our neighborhood, with people he knows well, it's cute.  I hope it didn't make the girl think he was weird.

AJ and one of the little neighbor boys had some bubbles as an appetizer before dinner tonight.

Life in Fast Forward

We used to have this board game in which players would be given a news story headline, and then they had to determine what year that headline was in the news.  My mom always said she was no good at getting the ones that happened in the 1970's, because she had little kids in the 70's and basically missed that whole decade.  We always thought that was funny.

Now, I totally understand where she was coming from.

It seems like when you have kids, suddenly life starts moving in fast-forward.  Does this go on and get worse as you get older, so that by the time you are elderly (whatever age that might be), entire weeks and months go by like a flash of light?  Nevermind.  I don't think I want the answer to that question.

When I was in elementary school, I remember how very, very long a school year felt.  It seemed like a lifetime between when a school year began and when it ended.  Maybe that's because a person changes so much, so quickly, during those early years of life.

I wonder if it seems that way to Aliza -- like a lifetime passes between the beginning and end of a school year.

Ever since 2003, the year Aliza was born, life has sped by in sort of a blur.  When I do think of a year past, it is defined by how old my kids were.  If I hear about something that happened in 2007, for instance, to get a sense of where we were at back then, I think -- that's the year the boys were 2, Aliza was 4. 

2008 doesn't seem like that long ago, and yet the boys were only 3, Aliza was only 5.  My big 3rd grader was just starting kindergarten in 2008.

2010 was 2 whole years ago now.  That's more amazing that the fact that it's no longer 2011.

And justlikethat, Christmas 2011 is over.

Now that I've got my hands on it, I'm outta here.

Whatcha looking at, Bob?

Matching snuggies!  Made by Grandma!

Look how great the pink shirt goes with my new Christmas PJs!

I don't really do New Year's resolutions, but I am going to try to be better about hitting the "pause" button on our lives, and take lots of pictures.  I don't want to miss this decade.

A Side Effect of STX209?

Could a penchant for women's clothing be a side effect to the trial medication?  Zack has developed quite an attachment to his sister's pink butterfly shirt.

(I'm kidding of course.  Zack has always had a weird attachment to this shirt.  Remember this day at the park, when he was loving all over Aliza because she was wearing it?)

You know what?  I'm perfectly fine with him wearing it.  Because with the pink butterfly shirt, he's calming sitting under the table.  Not screaming.  Not biting his brother.

Yesterday the pink butterfly shirt was in the wash, and the two of them were like squirrels on crack.  I have no idea what the deal was.  I swear they were running up the walls and across the ceiling.  So today, if one of them requires a girly shirt to sit down and stay calm, I'm going to be a-okay with that.

Otherwise, the three of them are spending quite a bit of their time off this week (parent-teacher conferences and MEA) doing this.

I don't think we are noticing any positive changes from the trial drug yet.  Maybe AJ talks a little bit more.  Maybe Zack has been a little bit better in public.  If I were looking hard, that's what I'd see so far.  But I'd also see that both of them, in particular AJ, have been chewing more.  AJ goes through two or three shirts a day because he chews on the sleeves until they are soaked up to the elbows.  Chewing is a manifestation of anxiety.

We leave for our third trip to Chicago this weekend.

I don't care what any of you say.  I think I look GOOD.