Straddling

Today was registration for kindergarten. I went to our chosen school, stack of official forms in hand, and filled out endless forms.  Like a lot of parents I'm simultaneously excited and melancholy about this change of state. FFM is beyond ecstatic at the idea of kindergarten, he was sorely disappointed it didn't actually start TODAY, but any shift in family dynamic means change and adjustment.

I'm busy adjusting expectations. F is growing up so fast that in the last few weeks he suddenly started making his own meals (within reason, no flames or sharp knives), doing little household jobs like putting away his own laundry, and all kinds of super independent big kid type stuff.  His brain has undergone a shift and his observations about the world around him have gotten increasingly complex, too.  I have to remember daily to adjust my mindset from little kid to this new increasingly self sufficient person.

However, he's not all the way there yet.  It doesn't take much to topple him back to the world of needing Mom to kiss his invisible owie, or Dad to give him just one more tuck at bedtime.  While change flies fast and furious it's not instantaneous, which is nice for us parents who are busy enjoying the fleeting moments of childhood.  For a few more months while he waits for Kindergarten to arrive FFM we will all straddles the divide between wee one and big kid.  After that, as announced by FFM, he'll officially be a Real big kid.

Doing an apres ski Big Kid workout with Granny Annie

Highlight of My Week

My husband just taught my 4.5 year old son how to clean the outside of his toilet.  YES!

Portraits

Like pretty much all parents in this digital age we have no shortage of snapshots and professional photos of our sprout.  Ourselves?  Now that's another matter entirely.  It's nice to remember that we are indeed an entire family and like his parents someday FFM will probably look back, make fun of our fashion sense, and enjoy the pictures of his parents more than the thousands of pictures of himself.

Smart Phone Woes

My smart phone needs a new case.  Simple thing, right?  Oh no, this is turning out to be harder than buying say a new car, or your first house.

See, Travis and I have the same exact phone.  It was a buy one/get one deal and seemed like a good idea at the time.  Mostly it is, we can do nifty things like share chargers, but the downside is our phones look identical except for their cases.  Travis has a sticky black silicone case and I have a slick red case.  He keeps his phone in his pocket and we learned that sticky cases pick up lint. I keep my phone in a million different places and if I had a sticky case it would drive me nuts, I have a hard enough time digging it out of my purse or pocket most days anyway.

My phone gets dropped every once in a while and the case is doing it's job, now it's cracked and needs to be replaced.  I finally got to a mall this weekend and stopped in at one of those cell phone case kiosks that I'm sure you've seen at your local mall.  The kiosk attendant proudly showed me the seven cases that would fit my phone and made extra sure to point out that three of them had "bling!" Uh, yeah, I know I'm a girl but I'm not really a phone bling kind of girl.  The other ones, all but one were sticky silicone.  Final one, BRIGHT baby blue with giant soap bubbles on it.  No thanks.

So, I come home and try out the almighty internet retailer AMAZON.  Yes, surely I can find a case for cheap, and free shipping, too!  Let's see here, input search...991 results yahoo!

Wait, 500 of those aren't actually my phone.  OK.  300 of what's left after that are black, which would make things very confusing around here.  Delete all the ones with bling...that leaves me with about 150 cases.   Wait, no sticky silicone because I can't get it out of my purse, OK make that 50 cases.  And they mostly look like this:

I do realize that *someone* is elated to find the perfect cell phone case with skull and cross bones sporting big pink bows, but it's just not my style.  I guess for those of us who are more sedate than bright green zebra stripes or more grown up than the air brush candy pink heart with fluffy flowers we could go with the leopard print bling, but I guess I'll just go with a plain solid color.  Except not black.... maybe a cracked phone case isn't such a bad thing after all.

Dressing for lunch

Sometimes we get really fancy and dress for meals. You should see what I'm wearing, sparkly tiara and all.