May 25th, 2009

Baby’s First Haircut

I took all three boys yesterday to our favorite kids haircut salon, Beaners, in St. Albert.  I actually was only planning on getting Big Boy and Little Boy haircuts, I love baby’s sweet curly hair and wasn’t quite ready to make any change!

So Big Boy and Little Boy got their standard cuts – fairly short but long enough on top for a faux-hawk (with color spray gel of course!)

Big boy w/new cut

Little boy w/new cut

While the two older boys were having their hair cut though, I was chatting with the great stylist and she was commenting on Baby Boy’s cute curls. I told her about my hesitancy to get it cut yet, and she suggested at least doing some spray in conditioner to moisturize it, to prevent the curls from getting frizzy. She sprayed some on for me and as she put it in his hair she commented that he really could use at least a little trim.

So I took the plunge and let her trim Baby Boy’s pretty curls – and yay! Still super cute and curly. Probably not even a noticeable difference to anyone but me or DH! Plus she took some of the clippings and put them in an envelope for his baby book and gave us a certificate for his first haircut. So cute and I even actually put them in the baby book already.

Baby Boy - First Haircut!!

So now I have three super cute kiddos all ready to go on their vacation with nice light hair!

3 boys

May 24th, 2009

Vacation in 5, 4, 3….

Yay! I can’t believe how quickly the time goes when you plan a vacation in a month! In three days or so I’ll be flying to Los Angeles with hubby, best friend and the three boys! We are all getting excited, especially now that it’s the weekend and we’re doing the packing thing. I’ve got lists galore and I sure hope we don’t forget anything (not like there aren’t stores in LA, lol)

We’ve got our general itinerary set for the vacation, which includes 3 full days between Disneyland and California Adventure, a day at Six Flags Magic Mountain, a day of shopping and a day at the beach.

I was chatting about the trip with a mom at Big Boy’s school on Friday. She is also planning a trip to Disneyland soon, although they postponed from this fall to maybe at Christmas time next year, as they are going with a large family group and couldn’t get schedules to match up otherwise. We were discussing how busy is too busy on a trip like this, as some of her group want to incorporate San Diego (zoo, Seaworld) into the one week trip. I explained that for us, that would be way too much. We’d rather have extra time at Disneyland itself (especially since the cost is better that way!) than spend 2-3 of our 7 days in San Diego. I definitely would love to see San Diego sometime but I’d rather make that a separate trip altogether! And we can’t simply add days to our current trip, as one week away from school seems like enough for Big Boy.

Okay, well I better get moving – 3 sleeps left only, lots and lots to do (especially to catch up on laundry – I love my new laundry line outside, but it means I have to pay attention and get the laundry done during the day!!!) Oh and of course I have a couple of client projects to finish up for my VA business! Thankfully, all my clients are so considerate of my need to take a vacation and have a lighter workload for a week. Yet another bonus to being a wahm!

May 22nd, 2009

Fifteen

One of my favorite songs lately is “Fifteen” by Taylor Swift. She’s truly an amazing songwriter and when I listen to that song I feel like I go back in time to when I was fifteen. You know, so often as I’ve gotten older I look at teenagers and see all their potential and how much life and choice they still have ahead of them. But when I listen to that song I remember that despite how it looks now, it was not easy then.

This is particularly brought home to me lately, as some family members are struggling through a very challenging time and I’m so reminded of my family’s problems when I was a teenager and realize how much they affected me then and continue to shape how I live my very life.

My parents divorced when I was 12, and part of the reason for the divorce was because my father committed adultery (does that sound better than saying he was a cheating ba$tard?) Knowing that he behaved in such an amoral way made me well aware of what type of relationship I would want when I was grown and I can certainly say it makes me aware of the impact of such behavior on the kids in a family. I never want my kids to feel like I did something that “ruined” our family. I wonder if other people think like this when they get involved in an extramarital affair. Do they think about their kids or only their spouse? Do they think only of themselves and their wants and needs? Does this make them selfish, immature, or flat out stupid? Am I being overly judgmental (I’d guess probably yes but I don’t seem to know how to have sympathy or empathy in this situation at all)

DH thinks I need to be more supportive of the adult in the situation, I think we all need to quit excusing people’s poor behavior just because life isn’t easy for them. How many of us have gone through hard times and NOT used it as an excuse to do something that can hurt every person we love?

But hey, maybe I just had a different attitude about parenting. I was able to choose to get pregnant, choose to be married and grown up first and I have been able to make many choices throughout my parenting time that allow me to put my kids first. And even still I sometimes fail and don’t do things I probably should.

Life is just crazy sometimes isn’t it? Oh well – while I have in the midst of the family drama lost my house/dog sitter I have one possible (and probably poor choice) to replace them and one pretty good choice to replace them. Somehow it will work out and my family can go on our vacation, get away from the crazy and have some great quality time together!