Easing into fall like

 

So far, this semester's on-ramp has been really slow and long. We started with just school for the kids and diving. Then we did those things plus swim team for Minnie. This week, we add my classes finally meeting in-person (the academic calendar really screwed me over this year). Next week, the dance season begins. 

(Dorothy made all company teams and is supremely happy-- she'll have jazz, lyrical, commercial, and 2 hip hops.) 

(Her studio has three competitive levels-- crew for people doing just one hip hop dance and not planning to travel to nationals, club for people going to nationals in a variety of styles but not competing at the very highest level at regional comps and nationals, and company, which is where she wants to be. The company teams travel to the same regionals and nationals as the club teams, but they also go to another travel comp with an extra convention and are generally entered in a more competitive category at comps. In years past, she has had a mix of club and company dances, which has made comp weekends really long. This year, all of her dances are company, so she should theoretically have a more compact schedule-- which could be good and bad when you factor in quick changes.)

(While the summer is an 8-week-long audition, all kids do make the team, but they don't know until placements come out how many dances they've been cast in or what level dances they make. As parents we fill out a survey and note our highest commitment level and the max number of dances we want to pay for, but that doesn't mean our kids will be placed in that level or cast in that many routines. So-- all of this is to say that placement season is stressful and not just because of the Jenga-like after school schedule that we can't fully grasp until placements come out.)

By the last week of the month, we will be fully into our fall routine, and so far, a majority of the components are really working (cross your fingers!).

Things I like:

Dorothy and Cooper riding busses and me peacing out to go to campus after Annabel and I walk Dorothy to her bus

With eye patches

Running before the sun comes up. I did listen to an excellent Lazy Genius encore episode about leaving the house on time, and she said you have to decide if you linger in bed with your coffee, if this is worth being pressed for time. I decided that I do NOT want to be pressed for time, but I DO want to stay in bed and drink coffee and read a book just about every morning. And if that means my alarm goes off at 4:55, then so be it.

A reward for a pre-6am jog

Putting my food in My Fitness Pal the night before. This becomes a really good time to pack lunches for Dorothy, Minnie, and me and nag Cooper to either pack a lunch or make a lunch plan with friends, too.

Forgot my carefully packed breakfast and lunch the other day, so I hit Whole Foods on my way in with plans to eat my green beans and chicken wrap when I got home

Doing laundry for a family with only 3 kids. This task takes NO TIME AT ALL.

Picking one 20-minute upper body strength workout from Apple Fitness Plus for the week and doing it 5 times (M-F) in front of Abbot Elementary.

Game Night-- this was something Minnie initiated, and it's so fun. I find it to be much easier than a move night, which is interminable. SO far we have only played Hues and Cues and Sorry, but I have plans to order Magical Athlete.

Hosting teens at our house. This is so much better than driving all over town to drop them off an pick them up. Dorothy texted at lunch and asked if she could have 3 friends over on a Tuesday night while I would be gone at swim with Minnie, and they all rode home on the bus, made themselves a take and bake pizza, and ate the cookies I popped in the oven when she texted (a freezer of dough balls really is THE BEST. I added a double batch of Pioneer Woman triple chocolate cookies to the choc chip ones I already had). Coop had a basement full over to watch the Badgers, and it was a similar thing-- pizza, salty snacks, homemade cookies and a fire in the back yard. So easy, and we could drink wine on the couch like normal.

Early Fridays on campus. Thanks to Anne for getting me started on this with a lovely coffee meet up (where she gave me a practically brand new Nespresso machine, and where has that thing been my whole life? It's fab. The only downside is that I have to drop the pods for recycling at Sur La Table, and I literally cannot walk out of that place without buying stuff. I DO TRY THO). I am out the door before Minnie even goes to school, and I don't get sucked into driving anyone or buying them coffee and smoothies-- it is wonderful.

Things we are still figuring out

Cooper's Friday night and Saturday AM diving practices are throwing us for a bit of a loop because they are new schedule challenges. We're traveling quite a bit the next 2 months on weekends, so we won't settle into those routines until mid October (and then his HS season will start in November, turning everything on its ear again).

Living without any extra drivers. This one is particularly tough on me with our after school rigmarole, but Cooper has a lot of places he'd like to be, so even when Ben is home, too, we are taking him to tee times and football games and driving ranges and then collecting him. And then there are the random errands!! On his birthday eve, I realized I only had an odd assortment of candles, and he was like oh too bad Jack isn't here to go to the store. And while I could have driven to Target in the rain for candles, I love that he knew I definitely was not gonna.

1+1+1+1+1+3+7=15

Nailed it

Minnie's locker room situation. It's a swim team safe sport rule that parents cannot go in athlete locker rooms, which makes sense. Except when your athlete is 6. Right now it's fine because the weather is OK, but when it's freezing cold, I imagine she will need help changing out of her wet suit. Or maybe she'll figure it out by then. Either way, the logistics of getting her and her fins and kick board and swim cap and goggles onto the pool deck without assistance (parents stay in the viewing area) and then getting her soaking wet out to the car are... confusing. And that's just practice! I can't even imagine what meets are going to look like.

So cute though

Farewell, pooooool

 This pose gave me some seriously effed up tan lines. Spoiler.

Hijinks

Last day pose that reminds me of...

... their first day pose

Waiting for the last jump

I told you I got sussy tan lines from sitting

Last garbage lunch of the summer!

Last Kit Kat of the summer!

Minnie's last dive

Cooper's last dive

Another perfect Hawks Landing Pool summer in the books. It was weird closing the pool on the very last day without ANY of the boys (Harry and Jack at college and Cooper at club diving practice).

I already can't wait for next year.

Happy birthday COOOOOOOOPER

 Hi! Just a quick blog drive by today to say COOPER IS FIFTEEN YEARS OLD. WHAT.

He is celebrating with cupcakes at diving practice after playing 18 holes with friends and throwing himself a football-watching party in the basement over the weekend. He's also getting his learner's permit today because his 16th bday cannot come fast enough, in his opinion.

9/9//11

9/9/12

9/9/13

9/9/14

9/9/15

9/9/16

9/9/17

9/9/18

9/9/19

9/9/20

9/9/21

9/9/22

9/923

9/9/24

9/9/25

Fiber maxxing

 Minnie and I running errands in our athleisure on Saturday. We went to our old Kroger (next to our current Target and our future IKEA) to get the stuff to make more cookie dough for the freezer and a roasted tomato pasta sauce.

Which? THE EASIEST WAY EVER to make pasta sauce. I just roughly chopped 2-ish pounds of tomatoes and one giant onion plus 6 garlic cloves, covered them in olive oil, vinegar, and Italian seasoning (plus fennel seed), cooked them at 400 for 40 minutes, and threw the whole pan in the blender with a handful of fresh basil.

We served it with rotini (I had whole wheat) and turkey sausage, plus an arugula and beet salad. The kids also had French bread and butter. Delish!

Other easy aback-to-school food wins? Cookie dough from the freezer, take and bake pizzas (Hyvee pizzas are fine, but the kids like Whole Foods the best), and Whole Foods prepared family meals-- sometimes all at once,

Cooper actually LLOVES the salmon, green beans, and sweet potato meal, and I like that all I have to do is put in in the oven, and we both also can eat it for lunch the next day. (only $30!!)

Please enjoy this photo of Minnie leaving school on the first day and just imagine my delight at seeing her like that. With a bag of laminated sight words her teacher asked me to cut out at home-- which is exactly the kind of work I love to do. Bonus-- Minnie got to read all the sight words (which she can, flawlessly. I hope she shows her teacher those skills. Last year, she acted really shy and was afraid to show her stuff, and her teacher was FLOORED at conferences when I asked Minnie to pick a rando book off the shelf and read it to me. Minnie scores really high on assessments but does not always perform at that level in the classroom...)

It's getting dark so early, you guys. We can barely make it to the park after dinner before the sun goes down. Also it is frog (toad?) season in our neighborhood, and they jump constantly over the sidewalk at might which is gross. Sometimes they land on my feet, and sometimes we step on them. It is very old testament plague-y.

Also! Minnie is staying up until 8, which really cuts into my couch time. Cooper is in bed before 10, but Dorothy stays up with me to take the dog out closer to 10:30-- she's the new Jack. SPEAKING OF JACK. YOU GUYS. HE IS PLEDGING HIS UNCLE JON'S FRATERNITY and just absolutely LOVING HIS LIFE in college. We get to see him this weekend, and I cannot even wait. 

He and Ben jog on campus-- how cute is that?

Annabel misses Dorothy so much you guys. Minnie and I coukd not find her anywhere the other afternoon on our way to pick Dorothy and Cooper up (TWO DIFFERENT SCHOOLS. TWO DIFFERENT DISMISSAL TIMES. WE ARE FIGURING IT OUT). She was definitely hiding:

I only have 9 weeks of a calorie deficit left to go!  This first week was fine. I stopped eating sweets, except for sometimes (depending on my saturated fat intake for the day) 2 pieces of dark chocolate. The only supremely shitty thing about that is that when I am done with my calorie deficit, I still need to watch my cholesterol, so I probably won't be adding regular  consumption of sweets back in even though I will be eating more overall.  I am an ice cream every day kind of lady, so that really does suck. Some swaps were easy-- skim milk instead of chocolate full fat Fairlife in my coffee, plain nonfat Greek yogurt instead of flavored Chobani, cheese as an occasional ingredient or add-on, not as a meal (lol this is a WI problem). I am also looking at the WEEK not each day, so next weekend, for example, we are going to Pekin, and I will FOR SURE be getting a cookie dough arctic swirl at my hometown ice cream shop. So, this means I will probably NOT be eating chocolate the other days of the week, and I will probably trim my overall calories from 1550 to closer to 1400 Monday-Thursday knowing there will be Cubs game food (going to Chicago "on the way" and Peoria food and just generally restaurant food (definitely harder to track).

If you need me, Il'l be here fiber maxxing.

Pop

 I know I am beating a dead horse here, but the dance placement thing (or, um, lack of dance placements, I guess) is making me foam at the mouth. All I want to do is PLAN MY AFTER SCHOOL life, and... I can't.

I have tried a million different ways to look at this as a positive, and... not finding them. Maybe it's another lesson in control what you can control? Dorothy is stressed about it from a what-team-am-I-on perspective, but we have been with this studio long enough t now that the season will be great no matter what-- I just want to get my carpool on.

The kids finally all went back to school, and I am not going to lie, I am relieved.

Do you love Minnie's bob? I definitely do!!

Before:

During:

After:

Annabel is bereft, but I am loving the quiet house-- might be worth the morning scramble and the terrible drives to and from campus, actually. So far life with 3 kids is incredibly easy, even by myself.

Our internet was out on the penultimate day of summer break (meaning NO TV!!) so we bought some coloring books because we had to delay pool plans while we waited on the internet guys.

A mouse(?) chewed through our fiber optic cable... somewhere? and they hooked up a new one.

The only concerning thing about that (because we have seen mice in the yard and on the school prairie recently) is that the other day when Ben and I came back from walking Annabel-- a walk during which we left the garage door open like IDIOTS-- a weasel you guys omfg was sauntering into the garage as we came up the driveway. DID A WEASEL WEASEL HIS WAY INTO OUR WALLS AND EAT OUR INTERNET?  

Ben and I only communicate with each other via weasel GIFs, BTW.