I can't keep up!

Days, weeks, and months have just flown by lately, and I can't seem to keep up. People sometimes mistake me for an organized person because I generally know what's going on - appointments and scheduling stuff, projects, due dates, and the like. I can generally stay on top of these things, but still I tend to be a last minute kind of gal. Happenings in the world? No clue. I don't watch the news, listen to NPR, or read the paper. Occasionally I scan the headlines of the local papers or the New York Times when I'm at work. My house? Always a mess. I try to make the bed and empty the cat box every day. Other things I get to when I can and then spend most of my weekends cleaning, only to have it feel completely undone within a matter of a few hours. My list of to do items? A mile long. And usually I forget half of them before I get a chance to write them down, or my many little scraps of paper holding ideas (that seem important when I do write them down) surface months later when I clean out my purse. No, I am not an organized person, but I do aspire to be one someday.

I've missed a lot of things that I wish I had taken the time to capture - in photos or written down. The girls continue to do and say funny/cute/crazy/amazing/brilliant things that I appreciate in the moment, but can't quite cement in my mind for later. It makes me sad to think that I'm missing it - important, big, silly, or little things. They happen every minute. My girls keep growing and changing. But, I'm not really missing it - I'm living it, and loving it!

Kennedy -
She is about to finish kindergarten and seems quite grown up in so many ways now. She is working on reading in English and Spanish (but gives up too easily and gets frustrated when she comes across an unknown word.) She loves when I read to her, especially the books from The Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley, and we are on book number eight right now. Trips to the library are one of her favorite adventures, and she has started a weekly trip to the downtown library with the kindergartners every Friday to pick out a book in Spanish. Kennedy gets excited by cleaning and organizing projects. She loved helping me sort through all the hair ribbons (arranging them by color on the new hanging rods we installed) and clean out the bathroom drawers using the new sorting trays for clips, elastics, and other hair stuff. She loves to help with things around the house, although occasionally our requests are met with a huffy response. Cooking, gardening, watering plants, laundry, running errands, she likes to help with it all. She is so excited to start up the job board again! I get a daily request to tell the girls stories - Kennedy likes me to make up Nancy Drew mysteries, fairy tales, or stories about our whole family going to Disneyland together. In one of the latest, I was joking that Eliza (an older and more mature version) decided to wear sandals with high heels to Disneyland, in case she saw any cute boys. Kennedy took right to this and started dancing around saying, "Eliza, we're not at Disneyland to go struttin' around looking for cute boys! We're here to have fun and go on rides!" She told me the other day that I'm not a very fancy mom because I don't wear high heels. True dat! I would never call myself fancy, but Kennedy likes to dress up with Macy and pretend they are princesses. She's picking out her own outfits almost every day, and often doing her own hair. Sometimes I object to her her choices (weather considerations, too small), but I try to go with it. She's getting better at soccer, but still not aggressive enough to really get after the ball. Jake said the other night that he's turning into his mom with the way he cheers for the kids - Sue did the same thing at our swim meets! Kennedy is a hard worker and somewhat of a perfectionist. She will do things until she gets them right. I got frustrated with her when she was filling out her library card application because she was writing some of the numbers backwards. I had her practice 0-9 on another sheet of paper, and later she was writing row after row of 0-10, checking off each line if it was all correct. She is trying to work on French to get ready for next year. I think she's a bit nervous about a new school and new friends, but thankfully she's not nearly as shy as I remember being as a kid.   


Macy -
This girl is a handful! Just like Betty Bunny (currently one of Macy's favorite book characters) whose parents tell her she’s a handful all the time, and because they love her so much Betty assumes being a handful is a very good thing! Well it can be a good thing, but it can also be exhausting! Macy loves routine. Once she finds something she likes, or that works for her, she wants to stick with it...and if our plans don't jive with what she has in mind we get a glare (man, she has that look perfected!), sometimes dramatic crying, and usually some version of "Then I won't be your friend anymore!" or "You just don't like me!" At the moment, her morning routine goes something like this:
Get in bed with me in the middle of the night; Get up at 5:30 when my alarm goes off to get ready for a workout; Drink hot chocolate and play in the workout room with a) the magnet cat, b) the magnet pet set, or c) her stuffed cats, rat, or dog, while my friend Sara and I are doing Insanity; Eat pancakes with syrup for breakfast, while watching a) Backyardigans, b) My Little Pony, or c) Busytown Mysteries on the iPad with Kennedy; Not get dressed or have her hair done until the last possible moment; Play with the cat family before school. If any of the above steps are missed or she feels like she doesn't have enough time - TROUBLE! Macy hates all cleaning. She says she'd much rather watch while Kennedy cleans up their room. She also refused to help plant our new flowers - it turns out that the reason was because she is terrified of worms (and Jake can't resist holding them right up to her face which makes her scream and run away in terror!) She does love going to dance and zumbatomic classes, and Thursdays are her favorite day at school when she has music and dance and outdoor classroom specialties. She doesn't like meals, but prefers snacks. Sometimes she will ask for something to eat within 15 minutes of leaving the table - something different from what was just served, of course! She loves movies and has no problem watching the same one day after day. In class, she likes to do the "playing" works with the tiny animals