Blinding them with science!

Quite accidentally, this past weekend turned out to be science weekend for the Davis clan.

Lester had to do the President's Cup at Camden Yards most of the day, so instead of me being able to take Clair to tumbling class while Dad hung out with the boys, I had to find something we all could do together. Luckily, the Science Alive folks were happy to add Clair in to the morning's activities: Life Under a Rock.

Playing with plastic bugs.

We learned about how to tell the difference between a spider and other insects, and the kids got to hold a hissing cockroach (Ewwww!) and composting worms. We also went outside and turned over rocks and discussed the worms and other bugs we found there. (This was on the boys' synapse checklist! And since they don't turn 4 until next month, I'm counting this as being on deadline!)  

Cockroaches = gross.

These little puny composting worms have nothing on the fat "bloodsuckers" we used to find when we were kids after it rained. I'm going to have to keep looking for those.

We even got to make earthworms out of nude pantyhose and cotton stuffing (finally a use for nude pantyhose!) And we made our own insects out of Play-Doh and toothpicks. Cary made an ant. Dean made a centipede or some such, and Clair made some mutant creature I hope to never see crawling along my baseboards.

It's got legs coming out of its head!

Then on Sunday, we met up with Kelly and Mark down at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's monthly rocket launch. Which is awesome. And free! (Beth, do you know about this? Your boys would love it!)

Kids and kids-at-heart build their own rockets and then the cool people at NASA attach them to launchers, do a countdown, hit some magic button and shoot them up into the air. Then they give tips about how to improve on the kid's next attempt at rocket-building. It was totally, thoroughly cool.

 Too bad my two little 'fraidy-cats were mostly freaked out by the noise (which isn't even all that loud).

Here they are before the launch started, completely enthralled.

And here they are once the launching started in earnest.

Hiding behind Lester.

Good thing there was a lot more to do, inside and outside.

Climbing the rockets.

Naomi, saying, "Blast off!"

Kelly and Mark wisely brought a stomp launcher, which was a huge hit with my boys, until they lost one of Naomi's rockets in a tree and broke another one fighting over it. Then, it was time to give her her toy back.

I love this photo of my three little moonwalkers.

Obligatory astronaut cut-out photo 1.

Obligatory astronaut cut-out photo 2.

Obligatory astronaut cut-out photo 3.

Trying out a real space capsule! The sign inside says that two astronauts shared this space for 14 days - in space. Oh helllls no. Also, so many potty-related questions.

Me and my sweet-pea!

The whole rocket-loving brood. Future astronauts, one and all!

Today, Michelle is off, visiting her best friend in Virginia, so Lester picked the kids up from school and is right now, as I type, at the Maryland Science Center!

Next week, for balance, we're gonna do lots of library-outings. :-)

I didn't realize one damn thing.

Because of a weird aberration in our family schedule, I had a few hours alone with Clair this morning.

I read a little to her, and she "read" back to me. We played chase through the house. She watched "Pingu" while I did her hair, and I cracked up every time she cracked up at the mischievous little penguin and his antics.

And she decided that she wanted to do Cary and Dean's dinosaur puzzle, even though she has no idea how to put together a big kid puzzle. She made a huge mess on the floor and got hilariously mad when the mismatched pieces wouldn't fit.

And while I was sitting there enjoying my baby girl immensely, I realized...

Well, you know what? I didn't actually realize anything.

Don't you get sick of feeling like every moment is supposed to be some great epiphany about parenting or magical childhoods or the meaning of life or some such?

Really, I just sat on the floor and enjoyed being with my daughter. That's all.

And it was pretty great. So I thought I'd share.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Time keeps on ticking (measuring the years in beds)

One night this week, while I was at a work-thing for a colleague, Lester surprised me by taking the boys' guardrails off their beds.

So in just under 4 years, we've gone from this:

Their cribs before they were even born. This is the room that is now Clair's.

 to this:

We moved the boys' cribs into the guest room when I was pregnant with Clair, to make room for her things in the small room.

to this:

After Dean tried to jump to his death from the crib a couple times -- toddler beds!

We converted their cribs to toddler beds in December 2012.

to now this:

NO GUARDRAILS!

After bath, Dean was having a hard night, and felt the need to take to his bed, like it was a fainting couch.

At some point, these beds are supposed to be able to convert to twin-size (though I'm not sure how) and then to full-sized. So we have a ways to go before we've gotten our money's worth out of them. But I already feel a little bit like, "Whoa! Where did the time go?" How on Earth am I going to feel when they're in FULL beds?

I remember when they both fit in a Pack 'n Play, all teeny and sweet, with fat rolls on their legs.

And now they have no guardrails. They get up in the morning and make their beds. (The night they got their guardrails taken off, Cary woke up at FOUR A.M. to make his bed, he was so excited. Yay for us.) They wake up in the middle of the night and take themselves to the bathroom. They stay up way too late, sitting up in their beds, giggling and singing and talking about things Lester and I have no part of.

How did this happen? Where did the time go?

They can't "let it go"

We have relaxed quite a bit on the TV-watching thing, allowing the kids to watch Netflix cartoons on weekends, and when Clair is either 1) getting her hair done or 2) getting her nebulizer treatment.

It's amazing to me how well TV glues them to one spot, and personally, I'm not that mad about it.

But we still haven't graduated to movies -- mostly because the kids still seem way too young to me to sit through two hours of plot development. They can sit for two hours, but only when there are changes in episodes or even whole shows. But one thing for two hours? Nope, not my kids.

So color me surprised when one day Dean was walking around our house singing, "Let it Go," the award-winning and oft-imitated song from the Disney movie "Frozen."

The kids haven't seen the movie and he had no idea where he'd heard it. So I showed him -- and the other two -- the video, with the princess, or whatever she is, belting out her therapeutic theme song in an icy tundra.

Now what did I go and do that for?

Ever since then, Lester and I have been forced to play the video - connected to our iPod dock, so it fills the house -- over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over (you get the picture). I have to play it in the car, streaming through the speakers, no matter where we're going. And when the car stops, I have to keep playing it, all tinny and small through my phone as we walk to the house. I had to create a Disney playlist on my Pandora account and hope, no pray, the song comes on first in the playlist. NPR in the morning has been trumped by "Let it Go." I used to be able to distract them with Katy Perry ("Look kids, a LION!") or, my favorite, Pharrell's "Happy." But no more. It's all ice cold Disney princess emo all the time.

Kill. Me. Now.

The only saving grace is listening to Dean try his absolute hardest to learn every single word and match Idina Menzel's passion with all his might. And watching Clair do interpretive dance to the song, twirling and waving her hands, ballerina-like, then running through the house on her tippy-toes, dancing. Once, Lester said Clair "caught the Holy Ghost" when the song came on the iPod. I seriously almost choked from laughing. 
[Note: Do you know what "catching the Holy Ghost" is? If not, you won't get why that was so funny. But take my word for it, it was.] 
Even Cary, who is not really a big performer -- even he gets into it, singing whatever words he can make out and doing a little old man jig.

It's hilarious to watch them enjoy a song so much. Truth be told, I actually rather enjoy their zeal for the song. They truly love it (who knows why. what the hell is a frozen fractal anyway?) and it makes me so happy to see them so moved by music.

Maybe one day I'll get them hooked on New Edition!!

Three things

Three things happened this weekend that made me stop and take note.

The first one is that we decided to keep Clair home from church on Sunday because she has a troublesome cough and a runny nose. The weather was super crappy -- cold, sideways rain, ridiculous winds. It seemed better to keep her home in her jammies. But I really wanted to go to church, so Lester agreed to stay home with Clair, and the boys and I braved the wind and rain and went.
When I got to the screen where you sign up the kids for Children's Church, I noticed that in parentheses next to our kids' names, it says "expected." Some of the other names say "guest" and others don't have a label. So I took from that that the church expects us to be there on Sundays.
This made me feel really good, for some reason. We're expected to be there. We'd be missed if we weren't. This is how I know this is the right church for us. At other points in my life, that one word, expected, might have made me feel pressure. But the church is so welcoming and warm, instead I felt good -- like a part of the family.

It's a really nice feeling.

Secondly, at tumbling class on Saturday, Clair didn't screech like a dying cat when another child entered into her play space. And at a birthday party for a friend's 1-year-old, she actually TALKED to a 3-year-old girl who was near her. She spoke to her, people. Willingly! The girl had a magenta party hat, and Clair's hat had rainbow stripes. Clair looked at the girl and said, "Das yours? Das your hat?" The little girl, Gabriella, said, yes. And then Clair said, "What color yours?"

Hellooooo, do you see what just happened there? She expressed interest in another human being, and initiated -- INITIATED -- a conversation!

I almost fell over. My child might not be a total misanthrope her whole life.

This face fools people all the time. She is really not that friendly.

Lastly, Dean seems to have grown 100 inches over the last few months. And his bossy (yes, I said "bossy!") caretaker, I-can-do-it personality has only intensified.

Birth order notwithstanding, it is so clear who the Big Brother is in our family. 

Maine!

It was cold as the dickens, but I loved Maine!

Can you tell?

Me vs. the lobster. Guess what? I won.

Does the LL stand for LOVE LOBSTER? If so, this is my kinda place!

Not shown in this picture: A platter of steamers and a bowl of mussels bathing in garlic-wine. OMG.

Colossal lobstah roll that almost made me cry. The buttery bread. The sweet meat. Can I live in Maine and commute to work in Baltimore every day? Seriously, I will do that ish!

The best part was when I got back and all the kids were so excited to see me.

Cary kept doing a little happy dance and saying in his little cartoon voice, "Mommy, I missed you!"

Clair said, "I couldn't FINE you!" in an adorably admonishing way.

And Dean peppered me with 10,000 questions the whole way home and asked if he could hold my hand going up the stairs (this, coming from Mr. Independent, is a BIG deal.)

Finally, Cary told me, "Mommy, don't go on any more field trips any more!"

I hadn't realized how much I missed them until I saw their little faces and hugged them close.

So, no more field trips for me for awhile folks -- even for all the lobster rolls in Maine.

Switching schools

OK folks, so it has now been two full weeks since my last post. That is the longest I have gone without blogging since I began this venture (other than when I was newly home from the hospital with Clair and not sure what time of day it was or if I was going to throw myself off the roof of my house.)

I'm leaving for Portland, Maine tonight with my two big bosses for client meetings, so I am really just waiting to head to the airport, which means I have a few minutes of "down" time and can actually blog! Now is as good a time as any, I suppose, to get out the post I've been trying to write about why we're switching the boys to a new school.

There are soooo many reasons, the two biggest ones being: Our family experiences, and racism in America.

 I'll just start with one reason here -- our family experiences -- and get to racism -- a huge and hairy post - another time.

Here goes.

Lester and I are both fans of and products of public schools. I covered public schools as an education reporter for years. My mother and sister are public school employees. I sit on the board of a public charter school. But in Baltimore, the public schools are CRAP. Crap with a capital horrible. There are a few schools that are OK, but you have to live in those zoned areas to go to them. And as you can tell from my many rantings about how much I want to get out of our neighborhood, we don't live in those zones. The charters are another option, but there's a lottery, so no guarantee, and also most are still fairly newish. So their track records are still gelling. Our options, then, are to move or go private.

Moving would make the most sense, honestly. We'd get out of our neighborhood into a better one, with a yard and neighbors our kids could grow up with. And, ostensibly, the schools in the neighborhood we moved to would be much better. But we're in no position to move right now, because of the darn housing market crash. Our house is a million thousand dollars under water. We couldn't sell this house without taking a huge loss. We don't expect that to change anytime soon, so when we do move, we'll be renting, I think. That's another story altogether.

But the biggest reason we chose private has to do with our family situations. Lester and I both come from families where we have witnessed firsthand the damage that can be done when kids are sucked into a peer group that is going nowhere fast. Of my four siblings, only one went to college. The others, to put it bluntly, are drains on my parents, even though all are adults with children of their own. With two educated, loving, present parents in their lives -- they still fell victim to the mediocre public school education in our going-downhill neighborhood. They were more concerned about being "cool" than preparing for the future. Our parents were (and are still) wonderful, but they have no network. So when the time came for my siblings to outgrow their immaturity and make up for lost time, their windows had closed and my parents had no friends in solid places to help them. I believe my parents will go to their graves taking care of my grown siblings. And my siblings' kids will repeat this cycle. It is a hard, hard thing to say this. I love my siblings dearly. I would do almost anything for them, and their kids especially. But the truth is, bad neighborhood + mediocre education equals not much of a life for any of them. (Aside from my baby sister, who is doing quite well.)

I don't want that for my kids.

In Lester's case, his family has even fewer examples of "success." But the one who stands out most is his cousin Joshua, who was like a brother to him. I remember how proud Lester was the day we dropped Joshua off at college in West Virginia (notice it was me and Lester), after spending hours and hundreds buying him a foot locker, a refrigerator, shower shoes and tons of packs of Ramen noodles.

Lester thought Joshua had beat the odds. With Lester's love and attention and sacrifice, Joshua had made it to college. But the pull of the old neighborhood -- and his old friends -- was too much for Joshua. Over a break in his freshman year, while hanging out in a city basketball park, Joshua was shot in the back of the head and died.

The neighborhood and the peer group were, quite literally, the death of that promising young man.

We have not really gotten over it. We likely never will.

Lester and I are not naive enough to believe that we can protect our children from making bad choices or being attracted to the wrong people. And we're certainly not naive enough to believe that private schools aren't FULL of some of the "wrong" people. But we hope that we can try to make a difference somehow by sending them to this very sweet Quaker school -- with its emphasis on peace, and community.

We hope we can protect them even just a little bit more than we could if we sent them to the city's public schools.

There's more -- but I have to run! Gotta go to the airport!

Working, playing, leaving a legacy

I got to hang out with my favorite girl this weekend, Miss Super Spunky Drives Me Crazy Cracks Me Up and Makes My Heart Soar girl.

(Sidenote: My parents visited on Sunday and at one point Dad says to me, "You are so enamored with Clair," which is the second time someone has said that to me. [The other was my mother, come to think of it, when Clair was a tiny infant.] Is it that obvious how much I adore this girl? Do I need an intervention?)

We went to her tumbling class and then to the mall to buy a gift for a friend of mine who recently got married.

She loves this ball pit o' germs.

Introducing her to food court Asian food!

While we were out spending Mommy-Clairzee time, Lester and the boys went to learn about "flying things" at Science Alive at Masonville Cove.

Dean, wearing the wings he and Lester made, and looking like a young Sidney Poitier, who, by the way, is one of Lester's favorite actors!

Our friends Antwyne and Mari unexpectedly brought their son Antony too! So the boys had a friend to hang out with, which makes me so happy. The more friends they see having fun with science, the more likely they are to think that science is cool, right? (Or so I tell myself.)

Antony and Dean bird-watching.

Checking out a bird's nest. Mari tells me the boys were none-too-pleased that the bird wasn't considerate enough to be home while they were shaking that tree.

And on Monday, I had a day off from work because Michelle was off. So after picking the boys up from school, we all went to a playground and to lunch!

Abby and Maya came with us!

She wanted to be gently pushed without stopping, to the point where she was ever-so-slightly falling asleep in the swing. LOL.

All this great time spent with my littlest loved ones made me think that being a SAHM mom wouldn't actually be so bad, IF we could afford it. The boys are 10,000 times less crazy than they were even a year ago at this time, when I would have stabbed you in the eyes with Bobby pins if you even suggested the idea of me staying home with the children. My Monday off with them moved so smoothly -- from drop-off to pick-up to bedtime dance party, rockin' out to the Jackson 5.

I was so much more relaxed and present all day. I think that was the nicest thing -- being actually present with them, instead of running on fumes and frustration.

Being at home would also be nice, because it would be good to get to do the things *I* want to do with the children during the day, instead of hoping Michelle will do them (which, most of the time, she doesn't.)

And it would be lovely to get to spend more than two hours a day with the children I actually prayed for.

But we are committed to sending our children to private school, for many reasons (which I promise I will get to in a dedicated blog post soonest), and to giving them a life of experiences that we believe will enrich them and improve their futures. And, while we are far from wealthy, we also hope that we can do more for them financially than our parents ever could, in terms of helping them pay for school, or buy a first home. By doing so, we hope the kids as adults will be in even better positions than we are, so that their kids will be even better off coming out of the starting gate. We want to leave a legacy that maybe our grandchildren will realize -- something that happens far too infrequently in the black community, sad to say it.

So that means Momma Gotsta Go To Work. (Cue Vanessa Williams' "Work to Do.")

So I'll cram a lot of fun and Mommy-and-me time into weekends and post-work-hours during the week, and trust that a little dance partying goes a long way.

Have you all given up on me?

I have become such a slacker blogger. I hate it!

Most of it is that my job has sorta doubled down on how we spend our billable hours, so every minute I spend blogging is a minute I have to spend when the kids go to bed, working on something for a client -- or else my hours for the month might suffer. And I can't switch it up and blog at night because it's not "essential" so I'll just fall asleep.

But it's also that the kids are doing lots of wonderful, fun, adorable, maddening things -- but nothing really new or Earth-shattering, so I feel like a 10,000th blog post on where we went this weekend is probably a little boring.  I have things I think about, but nothing is very deep. Does this blog have to be deep? I'm not really sure. I guess I'm not sure what it should be -- maybe that's the problem?

Anyway, I am determined to keep it going, though, because I really do love it and I want the kids to have this when they're older. Also, it's a cheap and easy way to keep up some semblance of writing for pleasure, which any writer worth his or her salt will tell you is crucial for honing one's craft.

So even though this is more of the same all over again, here's a brief recap of what's been going on in our world over the last few weeks.

We took the kids to a Science Night at their school, and it was a huge hit. The Maryland Science Center came and set up stations around the room, with things appropriate for pre-K kids, such as making rudimentary electricity and building a Three Little Pigs house, then trying to blow it down.

Making electricity. This made Dean so happy.

Building a house our of Lincoln logs and Popsicle sticks, with a classmate (and trying to keep Clair from destroying it.)

Huff and puff and blooooow the house down.

The funniest thing about this night is that Clair actually verbalized that which we have known to be true about her for some time. When we were walking around with her, talking to other parents, she got increasingly annoyed, telling me "Mommy, GO! Mommy, walk!!" And when I asked her what her darn problem was, she put her head into my shoulder and said, "I no like PEEPLE."

She also told me she was "angry" because I kept talking to people. Sigh. How can a child have so much personality and be so anti-social? I don't get it.

We also took the kids to a conservatory and botanical gardens, with their friends Abby and Maya (and their parents). The kids somewhat enjoyed the very interesting plants and flowers, but mostly wanted to feed the ginormous goldfish they have swimming in a beautiful pool.

Biggest goldfish ever - from all the kids feeding them all day long!

Clair, Abby, Cary, Dean and Maya

My girl Jill turned 45 and I went to her birthday brunch at a deeelish restaurant in D.C. Jill is a real fashion and style maven around town, so among her brunch guests was Michelle Obama's make-up artist, and also the First Lady's hair stylist. Of course, I had my hair in a messy bun because kids and thinning hair.
Oh well. The good news is, Johnny, Mrs. O's hair stylist, told me (after I begged him to give me hair advice), "I love your little bun. If I was a woman, I'd wear my hair in a topknot like that every day." So ... ummm...WINNING.

Love this girl - and her amazing haircut. Should I go short?? Decisions, decisions.

 This post came out in the New York Times and was DEAD ON.

From the article: "The modern 40s are so busy it’s hard to assess them. Researchers describe the new “rush hour of life,” when career and child-rearing peaks collide. Today’s 40ish professionals are the DITT generation: double income, toddler twins."

(P.S. I'm a "DITT." Who knew?)

I sent the link to my girls from the NOLA trip, so it can inform our book idea -- which. by the way, is in the works! We had one conference call and have homework to do to get potential topics for our individual chapters to the group by the end of this week. I'm awake some nights thinking about what my topics might be. But it's the best kind of insomnia. I'm so excited about this project!
 
Clair has hit the terrible twos with a vengeance. She is defiant and willful; she screams EVERYTHING. She fights with her brothers constantly. She thinks she can do everything "SELF!" except that she wants to be carried everywhere and, all of a sudden, she refuses to eat her meals unless she's sitting in my or Lester's lap. Sharing is an absolute no-no. She wants her "OWN!!!" And she has reached that stage where she is gold-medaling in irrationality. One night, we had an epic battle of wills, because she insisted that all she wanted to eat was pasta when there was none made, but there was elbow macaroni in homemade veggie soup. Nothing I tried would convince her to eat that soup -- and the crying and screaming "I want pasta! Noooo not that pasta. I'm talking 'bout PASTA" went on for so long that even Dean (usually a Clair apologist) sighed heavily and said, "Mommy, this is so annoying!"

In it all, I have to remember to keep my sense of humor, or else, seriously, I would be a thousand pounds from all the stress-eating (still doing Sugar-Free though, more or less, so yay for that!)

She would not eat until I found this book. Or stop crying. I hate this book.

So on this night, for example, when she cried for over an HOUR while I tore up the house trying to locate this book that she wanted, I posted to Facebook that I had been literally "Finding Nemo" for half my night. Get it? Finding Nemo? No? I guess you had to be there. Scratch that. Be so, so glad you weren't.
 
But she is also hilarious and talkative and says the absolute cutest things. And when she wants to be, she is the world's sweetest baby girl. I can't wait to see how her little (big) personality shapes up after toddlerhood turns into little girl. I just know there will never be a dull moment with this one.

We're trying to figure out the summer camp situation (so frustrating!) and we have not yet taken away Clair's pacifier at night, even though we were supposed to do that when she turned 2. #fail

And lastly, Lester and I have decided to send Cary and Dean to a new school in the fall. 

They went to a little festival at the new school and came back as superheroes. Clair lost her ish when she saw them all painted, and we had to wash their crime-fighting disguises off with the quickness.

This is a really big deal and I have A LOT to say about it, so I'll have to save it for another blog post -- when I have time to get it all down. But the long and short of it is, we love the school where they are now and have no issues. And the new school will cost us a jillion dollars more, and be more inconvenient in terms of location and days off, etc. So why are we doing it?

You'll have to wait for the blog post to hear the whole sob story. I wish we could all talk about it over dinner and drinks. When are we getting together, friends? Call me, maybe?

Shine bright like a diamond!

I'm home sick today and finally, finally, after sleeping most of the day, I have a little time to myself to put down in words the amazingness that was Girls' Weekend.

Some of you might recall I was less than enthusiastic about the trip in the very beginning. Not because I didn't very much want to see and catch up with this bright, hilarious, wonderful group of women, but because I worried about being away from my kids for three days and leaving Lester alone all that time with two 3-year-olds and a 2-year-old (can you imagine?)

But I am SO glad I went.

The obvious reasons need little explaining. I had three days of free time - truly free. No demands whatsoever from anyone. This was unspeakably glorious! I also ate amazing meals (it's NOLA, hello!) and drank delicious cocktails and then could sleep in the next morning. People without children have no idea the luxury of being able to wake up naturally after a night of healthy drankin'...
I got to laugh and talk with women I like and admire and missed. And I met C. Thomas Howell on the way home!!! What's not to love, right?

But the real boon of the weekend came entirely unexpectedly.

I anticipated all the laughter. I anticipated all the great conversation. I did not anticipate all the crying. Or all the encouragement. All the building-up. All the intense, but loving, scrutiny and accountability -- the kind that can only lead to self-improvement down the road. I had no idea all that was coming. Or how much I needed it.

But from the first moment we all sat down for a meal, there were confessions, tears and support (all before dessert). Apparently, before I arrived, the same thing had happened at dinner with another woman. And before I left New Orleans, it would happen again  -- and again. Each one of us had things we needed to say, to reveal or to lament -- about marriage and parenting, careers and friendship, love and ambition, transgressions and regrets, loneliness and self-doubt. And when one of us would venture out into the water of vulnerability, all the rest of us would swarm around her like bouys, arms outstretched. Sometimes to pull her in for a hug; many times to push her on to truth.

It was, in a word, DEEP.

I knew I'd missed having girlfriends around, but even I was stunned by how needy we all seemed for sister-love.

Back at home, we all marveled at how emotionally naked we'd gotten -- after not being in the same place all at the same time for more than 10 years.

One of my girls sent us this message afterward, which I've edited a bit, to protect identities.

Was talking to my good friend, XXXX, this morning. She just got back from a long girls' weekend of her own - a birthday celebration at a Miami spa. I think her group had six gals, all of whom are friends from high school.

Anyway, she mentioned that the weekend had been insanely intense: in-jokes, crying, liquor, sleep, laughing, confessions, etc. She said it felt like an exorcism or maybe a rebirth. That beyond the ties of love, husbands, kids and friendship, there was the specter of their shared mid-40s. And that, my friends, is a scary place to be.

That must be what we tapped into in New Orleans. That this time in a woman's life opens her up to much intense emotion and self-reflection. Because how else to explain how quickly we reached that amazing place where we showed ourselves to each other after so many years apart? It definitely could have gone another way, but by the time we all got to [the house in New Orleans], it was ON.

I'm turning 45 on Sunday, and can I tell you how excited I am about it?! And I wasn't, really, before our NOLA retreat. These past couple of years have been especially tiring and scary. I've been lower than I've ever been in my entire life ....But New Orleans brought me back to life in a surprising way. I can face my new life with renewed passion and energy.
 
She is so right, y'all! Reading that again, I get all goosebumpy. My life is not on hold (remember that post from just a few days before I left for my trip?) I just need to approach my life with renewed passion and energy!

Since coming back from NOLA, I started Sugar-Free February, determined not to let sugar continue its chokehold on me. I'm not saying I'll never eat another sugary thing, that's ridiculous. But I want to be in control of what I eat, not the other way around. My girls helped me to get to this point -- they made me KNOW that I can do it. They also encouraged me (as many of you have as well) to take the time to get to the gym or to yoga and believe that my children will be just fine for a few hours a week without me -- even if I work all day long. I'm mulling that one over, but I'm much closer to pulling the trigger on at least ONE night of yoga a week than I was before my trip.

And maybe most importantly, we have all started talking about writing a book together -- and have a conference call planned for tomorrow night to talk about what that book might be, what it might look like, what do we regular gals -- wives, mothers, friends, writers -- have to say that hasn't already been said a million times.

But we know that whatever it is, it will somehow tap into the unofficial theme we adopted over the weekend, a running inside joke about a comically-sung Rihanna tune that somehow turned into our mantra: Shine Bright Like a Diamond.

Because whatever we do, wherever life has taken us or will take us, we know we all have the ability, the capacity, the responsibility to shine bright in our respective worlds (whatever that means to us individually), like the diamonds we are.

Food!

Friends!

Faraway friends who crashed the weekend! (So glad she did!)

Fuel!!

The French Quarter!

And the Fountain Lounge, where a five-hour sweat lodge, over never-ending cocktails, went down. I will never forget this night. EPIC.

I highly encourage you all to take a girls' trip, if you haven't done one already. You'll be so glad you did.

Sugar-free update; so far, not too bad.

Counting today, I have nine days left to go in Sugar-Free February.

So far, it hasn't been as bad as I feared, although there have been some setbacks.

First, I tried so, so, so, so, so, so hard to resist the cupcakes I made for Clair's birthday. But in the end, I decided to take one bite to see if the cake part was moist (it was!) and that one bite sent me down the evil sugar spiral. I devoured the entire cupcake.

And then, the next day was President's Day, so Lester and I had the day off. After spending a few hours getting some work done in my office, I went on an afternoon date with my husband! We went to a movie ("American Hustle" -- very good acting!) and then grabbed a late lunch of tacos and margaritas.

Four or five long, satisfying sips into my margarita, I realized: OH SNAP! Margaritas have SUGAR! And lots of it! I might or might not have cursed a good bit and then I promptly gave the rest to Lester, but dang! The damage was done. I got home and had a massive sugar crash. I had to lie down for 20 minutes until it passed.

The sneaky sugar-laden culprit!

The fact that it only took a few sips of a syrupy-sweet margarita to send me crashing is actually somewhat good news. It usually takes way more sugar and carbs than that, because of my high tolerance for sweet things, earned over many, many years of indulging my sweet tooth.
So I think it means that that amount of sugar was a real shock to my system, giving me room to assume that I've done a pretty good job ridding my body of the toxin in the first place!

I wish I could say I could physically feel the difference from all this careful attention to my added-sugar consumption, but I still have children waking me up at night (Clair's been sick; Cary had a bad dream) so I'm still tired in the morning. I don't think I've lost a pound (my friend Jeanne says she GAINED 2 lbs. since starting this challenge. What the hail?) and I still have to actively fight the urge for something sweet afer I eat meals.

But fight I do, and aside from those two transgressions, I have not given in! Not a Valentine's Day chocolate was consumed, or even a post-lunch Hershey's Kiss. So I might not physically feel different, yet, but I do feel emotionally better about myself. I feel like I'm starting, ever-so-slowly, to take control of my sugar habit, my body and my health. And that makes me feel like a winner!

Clair is 2!

Our baby girl turned 2 on Sunday!

We celebrated by having a relaxing day, just the five of us. We went to church, came home, the kids had lunch and took a nap. And while they were all sleeping, I made cupcakes, decorated the living room with party-themed goodies and strung up some balloons.

When the kids came down from their nap, they were thrilled!

And we had our very own birthday party, complete with kids music, a few small presents and an activity: decorating the cupcakes with sprinkles -- as many as they wanted! (They took that part to heart, believe me.)

Clair mostly wanted to eat frosting and sprinkles. She enjoyed her presents for a few seconds, but then she wanted more sprinkles. Note to self: Never buy presents for 2-year-olds, no matter how small. All they want is sprinkles. And balloons.

Also at the "party," I gave the boys some pirate gear, which has proved to be a huge hit.

AAARRGH!

My little baby girl is 2, y'all. Two years ago I was still in the hospital, sore and crying because she wouldn't nurse, and soooo, sooo happy that my little Curve Ball had finally arrived.

She has turned into such a beautiful, spunky, hilarious, determined, loud and lovable little person. I am so glad God knew better than we did when we declared we were done having children.

Happy birthday, Clairzee! We LOVE you!!!

(P.S. I haven't forgotten about my promised post about girls' weekend. But I couldn't let my baby's birthday go by un-documented!)

Sugar pressure!

I just started the effort to rid my diet of added sugars (for at least the month of February) and I was careful not to begin until I'd surrounded myself with a support system -- friends and co-workers who are doing this right along with me and are there to offer encouragement, advice, good reading material or a swift kick in the butt.

So imagine how blindsided I was to feel sugar pressure coming from an unexpected group of tiny little plan-thwarters: My kids!

Yesterday at dinner, I asked the boys what was their favorite part of their school snack (I do this sometimes to assess what items to skip or what to buy more of). After sorta answering my question, Dean grins and says, "Juice!"

"Silly!" I said, "You know you don't get juice." (We send a thermos of water for them for snack.)

To which Cary says, "Mommy, all the kids at school have juice. Except us. We only have water."

"All the kids?" I asked.

And Dean says, "Yes. All of them. Except us."

You hear the daggers entering my heart, right? "Except us..."

Here's how I heard that: "Except us poor, left-out, weirdo kids whose parents clearly hate them and only send them to school with water -- FROM THE TAP!"

I would be less than truthful if I said I didn't feel a little twinge. I always thought I would feel good about our healthful food choices, especially since we have resolved not to be sooo completely crazy about every little thing they put in their bodies. We're not crazy health nuts; we're moderates! Heck, we even introduced them to Five Guys a couple weekends ago! (Mmmmm. Five Guys...)

My poor boys want juice and we make them drink the liquid of life instead! We're horrible!

And for a super-quick second, I honestly thought, "I don't want them to be outcasts. Maybe I can give them juice boxes twice a week or on Fridays or something."

But then I thought about Sugar Free February, and how much incredible effort it takes for me to get through every day without eating something sweet or not great for me. And I thought about the lifetime of unhealthful choices I've made that have contributed to this addiction I have -- because that's what it is, an addiction. I have a sweet tooth, no doubt, and that's genetic. But I have fed and stroked and catered to that sweet tooth so much, I've become a slave to it.

My sweet tooth is my master and it is literally killing me. My yearly hemoglobin A1C reports tell me so in big bold numbers. Each report calls me pre-diabetic and says, "Do something differently or you will. die." (In so many words...)

I want to break the yoke that sugar has around my neck. Why would I ever start the process of putting that same yoke around my children's?

That's why I won't succumb to the sugar pressure -- for myself or for them. An occasional treat is OK, like I said, we're not fanatical about it. But daily juice just gets their taste buds in the habit for something sweet with all meals. If I indulge that sweet tooth, juice becomes soda becomes Big Gulps becomes must.have.chocolate.cake. (Mmmm. Chocolate cake.)

As long as I'm in charge of what goes in their snack bags, they will drink water.  And so will I.