Weird Things I Do

You know how we all have habits and patterns that we follow? I was sitting here eating a snack thinking about mine and wanted to share a few.

1. I like to eat Cheese and Peanut Butter crackers with a glass of milk. I eat them the same way every time. I bite the cracker, take a sip of milk, chew and swallow. Then I repeat this process until all crackers are gone. However, sometimes I encounter a pack of crackers that doesn't have enough salt on them. If the first cracker doesn't, odds are the other 5 don't either. So I pitch them. Wasteful? Yes. But a ruined snack isn't worth the 25 cents.

2. My morning routine is almost exactly the same very day and I pace myself all based on the morning wake up song on Mix 107.7. If I am flat ironing my hair when the song comes on, I know I am on schedule.

3. During the work week my lunch usually needs to be microwaved. It's either leftovers or a frozen entree. When I dismiss my 5th period kids at 12:05 I always put my food in the microwave before walking the 6th period kids to the cafeteria. (Yes, we walk 8th graders in a single file line to the cafeteria- annoying.) The kids know that I won't walk them down until my lunch is started.

4. I sleep in a t-shirt and underwear. I can't wear pants to bed. They make me feel constricted. I wear shorts every 28 days or so (you should understand why) but those nights are always the worst sleep I get. Even when I was 9 months pregnant, I slept in Kendall's t-shirts and my giant maternity underwear. :)

5. I have a giant mole on my neck that I play with when I am bored. It is raised and I have had it since I was young. Even as a young girl I would play with it. I also play with my left ear when I am bored. When I was young I played with it so much that I wore grooves in the cartilage. It still has those grooves. I still rub them. Ask me, I'll let you feel. :)

Randomness

• DC sucked except for seeing Sarah Ford. Seeing Sarah was the only thing that happened that didn't end up with me yelling at someone. :)
• Kendall FINALLY got to see what his partner contract is going to look like. While I can't say I'm 100% pleased, I'm hopefully optimistic. I may not get to job share next year, but the year after that is a distinct possibility. His buy-in won't cost us anything out of our current budget and we'll still get productivity bonuses to boot, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to make up for half of my salary yet. BUT the best part is that we get the whole deal paid off in FOUR years. Yes, that means in four years time, we'll hopefully have a large portion of our other debts paid off AND we won't owe the practice anything. Which means everything Kendall earns, we get to keep. Which makes me breath a little easier.
• Max is sick...AGAIN! An ear infection and I think teething. His temperature went up to 103 this weekend. We took him in to the office Saturday night and ran a flu test on him (one of the perks to having a key and the alarm code to a doctor's office...oh wait and being married to a doctor :) and he was negative. Which was a relief. But he had to stay home from "school" today, which means Kendall and I had to split the workday and stay home too. Can't say I was too disappointed to leave work at 11;30.
• Speaking of which...I'm soooooooo unmotivated at work. I didn't even bring any papers home to grade today while I am "watching" Max. I knew he would take a long nap, and I decided I wanted to make my Christmas list. :) I have a movie planned for the end of the week...so no worries. HA! This is how I know that I should be job sharing. When I'm at work, all I can think about it getting home to him. When I'm at home, I'm grateful that I get some time to my day to see other grownups. Working part time just seems ideal.
• I am in the process of looking for invitations for Max's birthday party. Nothing is good enough. If you find a cute birthday party invitation with puppies on it, send it my way....but I need it soon. His birthday is only 3 weeks away! I may have to resort to online invitations. Not my favorite choice though.
• I'm really starting to get the baby itch again. I know, you're thinking, "But Lisa, Max is BARELY out of the baby phase!" But I can't stop thinking about how he's almost a "big boy" with all of the things he does now. And it makes me actually miss when he was tiny. Plus, I fear it taking too long. I don't want Max to be 16 with a baby brother. I exaggerate....but still....
• I am addicted to coffee. I used to think it was stupid to drink it every morning. Now I am cranky without it. The kids at school know when I don't have my morning joe.
• Is anyone else in LOVE with Glee? I put both of the CDs on my Christmas list. And it looks like they're releasing the first half of season 1 on DVD right after Christmas!
• I am officially ready for Christmas music and my trees and lights to be up. Sorry folks, I LOVE this holiday!

Baby 101

Sometimes I worry that Max is way behind and that I'm a bad parent. I'm sure that every parent feel this way at times, but I watch videos of Nicole and I read the blogs of friends with babies and I feel like maybe Max isn't going to be very smart and it's my fault. I know all babies are different. I know that boys and girls are different and do things at different times. For example, my mom says I was trying to walk by 9 months. My brother waited until almost 14 months. I was talking by a year. My brother wasn't. I know girls are typically easier to potty train and will train sooner too. Even knowing all of these things, I agonize over whether I'm doing the right things to make him successful.

For example, I've tried reading Max books. He won't sit still long enough to read them. Now that he can move, he has much better things to do. Like crawl over and play with his toys. Even at night, he doesn't want me to read him a bed time story. So I worry that because I'm not reading to him every night, he's going to grow up to be stupid. I keep trying to tell myself that when he gets a little older, he'll want to do it.

I was watching TV early in the morning last weekend and say an informercial for Your Baby Can Read. There was a 9 month old baby reading flash cards! Max can't even say any real words yet! Is that my fault? I talk to him all the time. We practice saying words out loud. I try not to use baby talk with him. When he is playing, i try to tell him what things are. Is this enough?? I hate watching that infomercial because it makes me want to order those stupid videos so that my kid can be "advanced".

Many of my friends who are parents don't seem to remember what it was like at Max's age, which I find to be very frustrating. At least it would give me a gauge for where he is at if they could give me an idea of what their baby was doing. I don't want to push him to do things too soon, but I also don't want to sit back and not push him hard enough.

Being a parent is hard.