Making Decisions

I have always been a tad bit indecisive. This is part of my versatility thing that I have been working on the past few years. Analyze the situation (quickly) and make a decision when one needs to be made. I am getting much better at this in my professional life.

Personal life? Not so much.

Leif will start public school... first grade, this fall. I am taking a big gulp and registering him for this new phase of his life on March 1 with a good friend who is also in the same position. Declining that private school option that we have been with for the last 6 years with Leif and jumping over to the scary unknown. The place where kids are eaten alive.

Ok, kidding. I have friends whose kids are surviving with minimal scars.

I survived public school.

But I also had my mom home there waiting with homemade cookies and orange juice at the end of the day.

This has been killing me for the last year or so as I stare down this new aspect of Leif's life. Public school. A bus. A class with actual desks in rows. A teacher to student ratio of more than one to six.

Today I met with one of my managers. I truly am lucky to be in such a great group with two women who have children and have been through this all before.

I am also extremely lucky to be in a position where I can make decisions about my career and schedule. Not many women can choose whether they work 40 hours a day, flex their time and work from home, or opt for a less than full time schedule.

I trust my managers and appreciate their input. So when my manager had a quick answer for me this morning on what I should do this fall with my son going into first grade, as one mom who has been there and done that with a very successful career, I truly appreciated it.

Last year I carried seven projects where six of them were my own with my name as PI or Co-PI. This year it dropped to four. Three of those finish (or wind down substantially) on September 30th. I am in a position where (if my proposals pending out there don't come through) I will be looking for work. This hasn't happened in years.

"Do it now," she said. "It won't hurt your promotability, do it when you actually have a decrease in work. Try not to go below 80% time."

And I left her office elated. My answer! And it felt right.

Starting late this summer I am dropping from full full time. To just mostly full time. Or almost full time.

And with any luck I will have more time in the evenings to hang with my kids, get dinner made and just be happy.

And to be there with homemade cookies and orange juice. (Maybe.)

Keeping it simple... and clean...

One of the really, really neat things about raising kids is seeing their evolution. Lots of people love babies. Ok, yes, I love babies. But I really, really love the toddler to young child time. I love when they start interacting. Trying to communicate, developing their own styles of communication, saying funny things. I don’t care for the Terrible Twos and Threes and I have had a lot of that the past two years, but we can just use a partition coefficient here and pretend that doesn’t exist for now. I keep saying it, and I will say it again. It just keeps getting better.

Since Leif was little he always showed a bit of OCD. In fact, I think I have a topic reserved in this blog for Leif’s OCD. The past few months this has spread into a new and interesting area. His bedroom.

If you saw Leif’s bedroom you would assume he is a poor abused child with no toys. While the reality is that the kid has a closet that rivals our Master closet and a toy room. But that’s not all of it… His closet? Skadi spends the vast majority of the time in the closet rifling through stuff, generally destroying the area. And I have about 6 Rubbermaid containers stacked in there as well. I will take storage space wherever I can get it.

Nope, Leif likes things simple. All he really needs are a bookshelf for his books, a place to put his clothes, a place to store his electronics (i.e., charge the DS, keep his headphones handy, etc.), and a few shelves to show off his trophies and his Harry Potter collections and to keep his new locked box. (I bought him a $10 cash box with a key at Target… best thing since sliced bread according to Leif.)

Compare to Skadi’s room that is just unmanageable. Seriously. That child can destroy her room faster than you can blink your eye. Tornado Skadi. And she has toys and loves her toys and wants them all out in her room at all the same times. This is a scary tale for another day. Leif's closet? Well she endured his wrath the other night when she pulled out a box of trucks and didn't put them back.

Back to Leif.

We have “pick up night” every Wednesday evening. The kids’ rooms get picked up along with common areas throughout the house to enable the housecleaner to be able to actually clean.

Leif is a master bedroom cleaner. When he says it is done, you can bet he is not joking. It’s done, it’s perfect and it took him less than 3 minutes. (I have started paying him to help Skadi with her room.) On top of that, Leif has started cleaning his room ahead of time so that he doesn’t have to do it on Wednesday. Because according to him he just has “too much stuff to do on Wednesday with spelling test on Thursday and all”.

Last Tuesday night I finished reading him a book and tossed it on the floor next to the bed. Wow did I unleash the wrath.

Leif: “MOM! I just picked up my room, I don’t want to have to pick it up again tomorrow, would you please put that book back where it belongs?!”

(I could have sworn I have heard this line many times before... only not starting with "mom".)

Leif loves having friends over, but he gets pretty massive anxiety after they leave and his room is a mess. In fact, I have decided that from now on we need to incorporate pick up time into play dates. I did this when I was a kid. I remember storming out of one friend’s house and marching home because we (once again) got into a fight about something. I got home and Jennifer’s mother had called my mom and told her I didn’t help clean up. Dang it. I had to march back up there (tail between legs) to go help her pick up.

Yes, picking up is going to be part of the new play date routine.

I see Leif’s future… a sparsely furnished, stylish (thanks to his interior decorator sister) minimalist loft. Hopefully he can find a woman who will put up with his neat freakiness…

Having Leif jump on me about not putting his book away made me smile.

My mom was somewhere looking down with a big grin on her face.

My husband, the beggar

We were in Costco on Saturday and AB had gone to fetch food for the kids to eat in the cart on the run. We shop, they eat. Works out great.

We are nearly halfway through the store - the VERY packed store, mind you - and I say to the kids, "I wonder where your dad is?"

Leif: "He is probably up at the front of the store begging for money," he replies matter of factly.

Me: "What?" I am positive I didn't hear him right.

Leif: "I bet he is begging for money again."

Me: "What are you talking about?" (Stifling the laughter and confusion.)

Leif: "He begged for money a few weeks ago. He is probably doing this again."

Mind you, we are in a very busy store and it isn't like Leif is whispering this. Nope, he is announcing it to the entire store. And it was no use convincing him he was mistaken, so I dropped it.

Later that evening I told AB about the comments and he (in between laughter and confusion) called Leif in to explain.

Leif: "You remember daddy, it was a few weeks ago, but you said, 'give me some money' and the lady gave you some money and there were chickens squaking too."

AB: "WHAT? What in the THE WORLD are you talking about?"

Leif: "Dad, you were being a beggar. You told the woman to give you money and she did and there were chickens."

AB: "Was this a dream? This had to be a dream."

Leif: (Getting annoyed.) "No dad, you remember! It was not a dream, you begged for money the other day!"

AB: "Wait a second... was this when we went to the store and I bought a candybar and asked for money back?"

AB does this. He doesn't like to drive all the way to the BofA ATM and doesn't want to pay $2 to use a nonbank ATM. So he goes into the grocery store, buys something in the checkstand and gets his cash.

Leif: "You asked the woman for money and she gave it to you! You were begging for money dad."

AB: (Huge sigh.) "No, that isn't really what happened."

No telling what daycare thinks of us.

(Oh and we haven't figured out the squeaky chicken aspect yet.)

Leif's 6th birthday

We spent Leif's 6th birthday at the cabin. Which of course meant that we had to have his party a bit later. That's ok, we don't mind spreading out celebrations in our family. When Skadi turned two she was sure that her birthday lasted the entire year and everytime we celebrated anything it was all about her birthday.

In keeping with that tradition of allowing my children to milk their birthdays for all they are worth, we celebrated Leif's birthday with his friends a few weeks after his "real" birthday.

I had a bit of an issue with Leif for his birthday party. For months he was declaring that he wanted a sleepover with a number of the older boys in his school. I just wasn't so sure this was the thing we should be doing. And I feared for my lack of sleep. I was ready to give on just about any other type of party, including Chuckee Cheese - which he amazingly didn't latch onto.

Then one day, completely out of the blue he announced he wanted a party at the Court Club - a rock wall party. Done. Booked. Before he could change his mind. There could be a maximum of 10 kids - which at this point in his life is hard. So many parties include all the kids in the class. We selected our 8 guests since his sister was included in those 10.

Leif with his two best buddies.



Getting started on the rock wall.


Success!

Yes, that is Skadi. The child that has no fear. I hadn't *really* expected her to climb...


Leif decided he needed a bit more of a challenge.

Scored the chicken!

C scored the chicken too!

N scored the chicken too!

Leif decided to move over to one of the even harder walls...

And he did it too!

Much to our surprise, not everyone was as into the rock climbing. Leif, Skadi and his two closest buddies were sold and just kept going over and over. While the adults worked to entertain the other 6 children!

Finally it was snack and cake tim!