48-Months-Old

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

Dear Zoë,

Today you woke up 4.  Four.  FOUR.  Wow.  My youngest baby is FOUR.  How did that happen?   I don’t know where the time has gone.  I know part of that is because you a are a constant whirlwind of energy and activity.  You literally never stop moving.  EVER.

It is hard to put into words the love I have for you.  Your spirit and your love of life is nothing short of amazing.  You laugh at the strangest things and you laugh every time your brother laughs.  And then when asked what you are laughing about you say “I don’t know” with a huge grin.

How I love your grin.  Mostly because if you are laughing and smiling it means that you are not crying, pouting, or whining.  All of which you do with the same vigor and spirit as when you are happy.  It’s is quite annoying amusing.  Mostly.  You have taken to trying to tell jokes and let me just go on record here–Your jokes do not make any sense.  But I love you and I laugh.  I laugh not because your jokes are funny, but because they don’t make any sense and I have to wonder where you get your joke telling from and then I remember that your father isn’t the best joke teller and then I understand.  Recently you told this joke:

“Knock knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Chicken”
“Chicken who?”
“Chicken aren’t you glad I did say cross the road.”

WTF?  What are you learning at school?  I pay a metric ton of money to send you to private school and you can’t tell one joke?  You try to combine two.  Over achiever.  But we laugh because we love you and its adorable.

You have become very independent of late.  You’ve always been pretty independent and all about doing things for yourself.  You now get your shoes on the right feet about 95% of the time–which I have to say impresses me.  Especially considering you don’t seem to be able to pick up your shoes and put them away in the basket where they go :).  You have begun picking out your own clothes and ask if your dresses are too short and if you need leggins.  I would like this written down because you will eventually stop asking and will eventually stop giving you a choice. So get used to that now.

You are flourishing at school and your attitude is getting snarkier–which is understandable since you’re pretty sure you know it all right now.  Your teachers have nothing but good things to say about you and you are learning to write and you can color in the lines.  Impressive.  You love your teachers and your friends.  Really, you love just about everyone and you have yet to meet a stranger.  You are happy and love to talk.  LOVE. TO. TALK.  There is very little silence with you around and I’ll be honest, it sometimes drives me crazy.  Sometimes I just need quiet–but you have a need to fill every silence with something.

You are 4.  You have been a dream of ours for as long as I can remember.  Only in my dream you were obedient and quiet.  You have made our family whole.  Your heart and your kindness are inspirational.  You love completely and fiercely.  You give the best hugs.  You also stand up for yourself and aren’t afraid to back down.  You use your feminine wiles to try to get your way on everything.  Mostly you are unacceptable and tell me that you won’t let me be your mom if I don’t let you have candy for breakfast.  Then you’ll cry and say your feelings are hurt that you can’t have cookies for dinner.  Well, I will tell you this sweetheart–I am your mom and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl.  I love watching your grow.

Love,
Mother

Change Is Afoot

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 2 Comments

So, I’m just going to say it–because it has been eating at me for a week now.  I got a new job.  A great new job.  An amazing new job.  But I won’t be blogging much about my great new job.  It is a fabulous opportunity and it comes with a very hefty pay raise.  Like almost double what I currently make.  So that’s awesome and means that my husband is currently car shopping and adding an iPad to his Christmas list. I am eying a second Epiphanie bag.

I am still working in the charter school sector but have a fancy new title of Director–I won’t say more as I don’t want to necessarily be goggled with my job and connected here.  I know, it’s sad.

But I am so happy.  I can’t wait to get to start my new job.  I am sad about leaving my current job, but my boss is amazing and she has been so supportive about my leaving, etc.  What is even nicer and goes to further support my belief that things in life happen the way they are supposed to happen is that I didn’t apply for this job.  The job found me.  It is nice to be a first choice for a job you didn’t apply for.  Knowing that your new boss thinks you are the best one for the job and not just the best one that applied.  So, I’m feeling pretty good about myself.  Hopefully good enough to stay way from the chocolate that calls to me from my desk.

I am committed to doing a two week sugar detox–hoping to push it to nearly 4 weeks.  I’ll be honest–I am going to have pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving with homemade whipped cream.  But, I am really serious about getting healthy–it’s less about losing weight for me now than it is being healthy.

Part of this might have to do with the fact that I just read 15 student papers analyzing Food, Inc.   Wants to make me not eat anything from a store.  I certainly am not buying tomatoes that aren’t organic and locally grown anymore.

So, things are changing.  Now only if I could figure out how to get my kids to stop whining or my husband to put the dishes in the sink and not on the counter.

 

Ready For Madness

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

It’s that time of year again.  NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo.  I am not crazy enough to attempt NaNoWriMo.  I’m just not–Now if was it was NaDisWriMo (national dissertation writing month) I might be down with that.  But I don’t have time to write a novel and I certainly don’t have time to set myself up for failure.  So, I am going to again throw my hat in the ring for NaBloPoMo and post every day this month.  I managed to successfully do it last year, so I am hoping I can repeat that success this year.  I am feeling good about things now in my life, as good things are happening–so this should be a breeze 🙂

Maybe that is just the halloween candy high speaking.  Or the idea that I am giving up added sugar for the month as well–I just might go insane.

I always look forward to this month, as it gives me a reason to make time to write and not write something academic but to write something I want to write.  To write about the regular, the everyday.  I don’t make time for that in my life as much as I should.  Writing is so important and I make money teaching writing…I need to make sure I practice writing so that I can better teach writing.

So, here we go….