Out With The Old

So the past two years my New Years Eve posts have been maudlin and sad and grumpy.  And I will not do that this year.  Yes, 2009 was sad and hard.  Oh, so, so, so hard.  But there was much to be happy for too.  Starting with the house I love so.  And everyone is healthy and loved.  Things could be worse, things could always be worse. 

And all this stuff that is going on with Michael we will figure out.  If he has learning disabilities we will get him the help he needs.  If he has ADHD we will get him the help he needs.  I need to stop focusing on all that is wrong and start focusing on all that is right.  It took a while, but we have found a school that I think is "the right fit" and Michael will adjust.  I believe he will and his teacher believes he will.

2010 is going to be his year.  I can feel it.  He is turning 5.  5.  A whole hand.  All good things happen when you are 5.  We are going to make it happen.  

We are spending the evening just the three of us, playing wii.  And after Michael goes to bed I have a lovely dinner planned with more wine and wii.  What could be better?

Happy New Year dear readers.  I wish you health and happiness in 2010.  May the New Year bring only the good, and if it brings the bad, may it be only the bad you can handle.  And you can handle it all.  If there is anything I have learned, I have learned that.

Look, Over There

I'm finishing out the year by posting other places.

On DC Metro Moms I'm going on and on about how much I love my wii, if your not sick of that topic already.

And MamaPop has my roundup of the top pop culture stories of 2009.  It's a tad different than my usual legal beat, so please, go take a look.

DCMM: The Family That Plays Together

We got a wii for Hanukkah.  And yes, we were maybe some of the last people on the planet to obtain said gaming system.  I was one of those, what the hell am I going to do with a wii kind of people?  I don't really like video games.  And we don't really NEED ONE.  But my four year old started Occupational Therapy for some fine motor and gross motor issues and his OT suggested it as something we could do at home to work on gross motor skills.  And then I received a wii fit at a Nintendo blogging party and my mom offered to buy us a wii for Hanukkah, and we ended up with a wii.

It is has totally changed the way my family interacts with each other.  My husband has never been TV person.  And I love TV.  So in the evenings, after my son went to bed, I would watch tv and he would go up in his office and do whatever.  Unless we specifically scheduled time to watch a movie together, or we were working on a project for the house together, we weren't really "together."  Now we wii

And my four year old loves this thing.  He begs to play it.  He wakes up every morning yelling, time to wake up and wiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!  And I really do see what his OT is talking about.  The sports games are active.  And he is always moving.  And I would rather have him moving around then watching TV.  Also, we just have to threaten to take the wii away and Michael falls right in line.  It is my new favorite discipline technique.

I am cognizant though of too much "screen time."  I have always been fairly strict about television time for Michael, but I see myself slipping when it comes to the wii.  Do I add up wii time with TV time to come to the total, or is it separate?  And because it is active, I don't seem to care as much because Michael is not sitting on the couch and vegging out.

I'm sure the newness will wear off soon and things will go back to normal.  But I really like the fun family time we have been having.  Even if it is getting a tad competitive.       

Palentologist Michael

I got some tweets in response to this post like huh?  Dinosaur class?  (On another note, what happened to comments?  I love @replies on twitter but I think they have made blog comments go away.  And I miss blog comments.)

But anyway, dinosaur class.  The lovely people at the Curiosity Zone emailed me to find out if Michael would want to take their dinosaur class.***  And I had never heard of the Curiosity Zone because it is an hour away.  But I took them up on their offer because dinosaurs!  And Michael was so excited he insisted on wearing his dinosaur shirt and dinosaur underwear.

I'm not really sure what they did because how much information do you get out of a four year old?  But I know that they dug for fossils and he came home with a shark tooth necklace.  The staff could not have been more helpful when we were a half an hour early (I had no idea how long it would take me) and instead of making me find something to do they let Michael hang out with some of the other kids in before care.  I went to Starbucks during the class and got some work done.  I was even able to buy some birthday party presents at their toy store.  Win, win!  

***Michael attended the class free of charge.  The opinions expressed are solely my own.

  

Not Really A Week Off

We have a crazy week around these parts.  Michael is off of school and I took the week off of work and filled it with a dinosaur themed class*, doctors appointments, play groups, theater tickets, and various other activities.  And now I have no idea what I was thinking.  When I planned all of this I was like, must fill these 5 days so we are not bored.  And now I am thinking, we will never get all of this done and all Michael wants to do is play wii and I would like to go to the gym during my week off. 

We had lovely holidays, the kind that comes with minimal family trauma and happy children and lovely, unexpected gifts.  Our New Years Eve plans are up in the air right now, we may be having a dinner party with some couple friends, it may just be Doug and I with wine and wii.  (Man I love that wii.  Seriously.  How come people didn't tell me how much fun this thing was years ago?)  

Posting may be light this week as I shuttle Michael from this thing and that thing, and my nights are taken up wiiing.  But I promise my traditional maudlin New Years post later this week.  (I'm kidding, it won't be maudlin.  Well, maybe a little.  2009 kind of sucked.  A little.) 

**The lovely people at the Curiosity Zone invited Michael to a class fee of charge.  I'll let you know what he thinks.

The Merriest

Even though we technically don't celebrate, we are off to the inlaws tomorrow to celebrate with them.  I'm spending the day at the office while Michael is at his one day at "the bridge" program at school.  (We expected it to be more but the stupid snow closed it.  I thought it would be closed today but they opened even though schools were closed.)  I expected a complete and utter freak out this morning, with a different teacher and different kids.  But I told him over and over that this was one day, just one day, and I really needed him to hold it together because Mommy really needed to go to work.  And he did.  I think it was all the wii.

Shoe Friday is going to take a holiday break, but will be back in 2010.  Please, send me some more shoes.

And to all who celebrate, I wish you the merriest of Christmases.  Peace on Earth and Joy towards Man.  What can be bad, right?

 

Wii!

I'm sorry, but Michael is out of school and we are much too busy wiing to blog. I'm so busy, in fact, I typed this from my mobile ap and not even my computer.  Michael woke up at 6 am yelling, I want to wii!  Yesterday, he didn't know what a wii was.  He is 4.

Back to bowling.

I Survived Snowpocalypse, Barely

By now you have heard DC got two feet of snow.  And at first it was like Wow!  Amazing!  This is Snow! Of! Epic! Proportions!  And then it was like, I would like to leave my house.

I wish I could say Michael had a great time playing in the snow, but I can't.  There was this, which lasted about a half an hour, and then the next day while Doug was shoveling he lasted a total of 5 WHOLE MINUTES.  It took me longer to get him in and out of his snow clothes than he played in the snow.  He came inside with a whiny, "But Mommy, it is cold."  And what was I going to say, I was sitting inside.  I know it is cold.

Luckily the new house is part of a municipality that has some pretty awesome snow removal services and Doug spent 4 hours shoveling our driveway (he loves me for the whole we have to buy a single family home so much right now) so on Sunday afternoon we braved the perfectly clear roads and took Michael to see Princess and the Frog over his protests that boys don't like princesses.  Which doesn't make much sense since we downloaded the Tinkerbell movie from On Demand and he watched it twice in 24 hours.  So boys like fairies but not princesses.

But it is ok, because he loved the movie.  And we got out of the house.

We didn't even get to go to my parents house for our annual family Hanukkah celebration.  Which sucks, because I still don't have a wii.  And a wii would have made snowmagedeon that much more tolerable.

So schools are closed for the near future and I have no idea when I am going to be able to get into my office again.  (Because the Federal Government closed but not my office.)  But I know I have to get in there soon because I took the week between Christmas and New Years Eve off, and I was out last Thursday with what I thought was a deadly strain of the stomach flu.  (Spoiler: I survived.) 

So all in all I think I have left my house 3 times in a 72 hour period.  I'm beginning to lose my mind, as if you cannot tell from this blog post.  Send reinforcements.  And I'd love some Bailey's for my hot cocoa.  And for the love of G-d will someone just open the schools the roads are fine.

I told Doug we are moving somewhere warm.  And he was like, we just moved into this house.  Remember how much fun that was?  I was like TWO FEET OF SNOW.  LET'S MOVE TO FLORIDA.  He told me to go to sleep.  This is how our marriage survives.  I talk, and he ignores me.

I hear Sedona, Arizona is lovely. 

Merry Snow Day

Today is the 10 year anniversary of my first date with Doug.  We had BIG PLANS.  They have been canceled in favor of this.

Be safe, stay warm and dry.  And have fun.  (I'm staying inside.)

 

Shoe Friday #59

Andrea submitted two pair, and this is what she had to say about them:

The first: Black Heels from JCrew.  I've had them for TEN years and they are my favorite pair on the planet.  The quality is unbelievable, they look almost like I just bought them.

The second pair are silver ballet flats from Esprit.  I bought them when I lived in Germany last year and I love them (even though they are sorta too small I wear them anyway ;)

(On another note, everyone wish my sister a Happy Birthday!)