Confession: I am a tad of a secret Halloween Scrooge. On the outside, I will be smiling from ear to ear tonight watching my girls go house to house filling their buckets to the brim with candy beaming with excitement. But on the inside, as a mom, I have to admit I don’t really care much for the holiday. At all.
And when I thought about the reasons why, it made me laugh so I am going to tell you 5 Things I Don’t Like About Halloween.
Before kids, I never used to get when people said “marriage takes work” because my husband and I were so compatible our relationship used to feel effortless.
But those were the days when, just for an example, we would sleep in on Saturday morning, have breakfast together, read the paper, maybe go for a bike ride or go grocery shopping together, hit a movie, go to a home store to buy stuff to work on our house, make dinner together or maybe go out for dinner and drinks, you get the idea.
Every weekend, all weekend it was just the two of us. And what that meant was we had a lot of TIME to focus on each other, talk and connect. No wonder it felt so easy!
Now after kids, I can absolutely see how marriage does take work. Anyone else feel the same?
There are stretches of time when I feel like we are both totally immersed in “Operation Scheumann Household.” We are a cooperative team focused on everything we need to do to take care of the kids and our household. Kids, activities, cleaning, shopping, birthday parties, organizing, work, bills, etc. etc. And unfortunately “Operation Scheumann Marriage” is often a neglected mission.
Our family forged into unchartered territory this past week when our oldest started Kindergarten.
There she is on her first day. I saw this post on Angry Julie Monday and loved the idea of having a photograph with her holding a sign on her first day each year.
Then I thought maybe I will have her write the first day sign so we can also see how her writing changes year after year.
There is her handmade sign. I love that the date reads “P 6 11” instead of “9 6 11!”
So, we survived the first week and overall, she is doing great.
She has lined up and marched in with a smile each morning and for this I am incredibly grateful.
But the longer days and transition from preschool have been a little tough, I am not gonna lie! The first three days she would greet me with a smile at pick-up, then immediately break into tired tears and grumpy rants on the way to the car.
It has been a roller coaster of a week and there have been a few lessons I learned from this whole process of starting Kindergarten that I thought I might share for what it’s worth. If anyone else has tips or advice, please do share! As a mom, I can use all the help I can get.
In hindsight, I would have done a few things different, but being she is our first child I just have done my best. My friend calls first children the “first pancake” because as parents sometimes we don’t know what we are doing and have to test things out trial by error with our first.
On the 10th anniversary of 09/11/2001, I wanted to take a moment to stop and remember.
Just typing the word anniversary right now made me feel sick to my stomach, because to me, the word anniversary should mean happy things; celebrations of marriages, relationships, new beginnings.
And sadly 09/11/2001 was a new beginning, but in a terribly sad way as life as we knew it would never be the same. Where were you the day the world changed?
I remember it so vividly, every part of that day, that week, the months after.
On September 10th, 2001 I kissed my fiance good-bye and he left on a flight for a consulting job in Ohio for the week. I went to my parent’s house that evening to assemble my wedding invitations as our wedding date of November 10th was slowly approaching.
My oldest starts kindergarten on Tuesday.
I wish I could say I am totally calm and zen about it, but I am most certainly not! I have been a somewhat…