I feel like the Energizer Bunny

Today was too busy to be a Saturday. Saturdays are for hanging out in our PJs, cooking a big lunch, reading books that don't have anything to do with school. Nope, not today. Today started with an 8:30am meeting at the hospital for the KINDNESS program. The KINDNESS program is a fabulous program that provides lactation services to every mother in Kodiak (we service formula feeding families, too). I volunteer in a couple of different ways for this program - I facilitate the breastfeeding support group that meets weekly and I take two days a month to do hospital visits for newly delivered moms/babies. For the month of December, I am feeling a little guilty that my schedule is so packed that I do not have time to give 2 days to the hospital. In fact, I canceled the breastfeeding support group meetings for the last two weeks in December, and then the new facilitator takes it over in January. I feel like I am moving in 100 different directions these days.

After the meeting, I went to spinning class. It is like therapy. Today there were 4 of us there and we all have small children. It was so great to talk about the mommy-peer pressure. Sometimes people mean well and try to give good advice, but the way it is presented overshadows the goodness of the advice and the only thing heard is the tone and not the message. Such was the case this morning during the meeting at the hospital (3 of us from spinning are also involved in KINDNESS). It's so difficult to feel good about the job we are all doing raising our kids, when it seems like every day we are hearing that something we are already doing is 'bad for our kids'. My own philosophy is that I can't beat myself up over all the 'shoulda, coulda, woulda' type things. I think I do a decent job of keeping my kids' health and safety in mind. I'm certain there are things that I knew and did differently with Megan than with Joshua; and with Daniel things were totally different than with Megan and Joshua. I guess we'll all just continue to learn and make better decisions as we gain more information about our parenting choices. I did learn today that absolutely no milk should be in a child's diet until they are one year old. Of course, I already knew not to give them milk in a cup until one year old, but when I heard about all the things that we give our kids that have milk in them - and I know my kids have teethed on those things, the guilt was enough to make me want to crawl under a rock. But enough about mommy-guilt. Like Maya Angelou says - "When we know better, we do better".

After spinning, I had just enough time to get home to shower, change Megan's clothes and run out the door again to be at the auditorium by noon for another Nutcracker rehearsal. Here's a sneak peek of the costume. Keith wasn't sure if she was actually in the Nutcracker of if she was taking a trip out to Hugh Hefner's place.
My plan is to actually sit and enjoy her performance next Sunday, so I thought I'd get the picture taking out of the way now. Megan is the one in the middle, 4th from the left.

Here she is getting a peptalk from 'Clara' the lead dancer in the Nutcracker. Megan was complaining that the music was too loud. So depending on her mood, she's either in the middle of the group, or right on the end where she can hold the teacher's helper's (Tessa) hand.

Finally, Megan and I made it back home around 1:30pm only to find Optimus Prime and Ratchette staring down at me from the cabinets in the kitchen. Apparently, Joshua was fighting too rough with his transformers while I was gone and Keith was not happy with the level of violence Josh was displaying, so the transformers are in a time-out.

I had enough laundry to do tonight to clothe a small nation and I ran out of laundry detergent. Yuck, that means my 2nd trip to Wal-mart in two days. Off to the store I went and somehow ended up getting distracted in the fabric section and bought even more felt for the kids' Christmas present. And I picked up some super-cool markers for Daniel. I had good intentions of making a lasagna, tossed salad and fresh garlic bread for dinner, but I was exhausted and the kitchen was already clean, there was no way I was going to make a mess. So we had a simple dinner of spicy black beans and rice with plenty of cheese mixed in for the kids to tame the spicy part. Yup, not a fruit or vegetable was seen on my dinner table tonight. I must be slipping. In fact, since I'm in the confessing mood - one morning last week, we ran out of milk so I poured egg nog into Daniel's Cheerios. He ate them all up and asked for more.

After dinner tonight, I made everyone get dressed in matching clothes to get the Christmas pictures finished. We never did make it out to get Santa pictures today (I wonder why not?). After well over 100 pictures - we got one that will work for our Christmas cards. I wanted the one that I posted here, but Keith made me go with a nicer one. Daniel is saying Ho, Ho, Ho.