If I blog, will time bend to my will??

Time is moving at a terrifyingly fast pace. We've been in NJ nearly 7.5 months and I have approximately 1348 pictures to show for it but I've processed nothing that has happened within that span of time. It's challenging to take the time to really absorb all the wonders of your child's mental and emotional growth when you are yourself on the brink of mental and emotional breakdown and you are operating in survival mode. But tra la la la, why allow the boring realities of adults hamper the nonstop fun of children.

I am hoping that if I, for the umpteenth time, make an effort to document my days with the girls, time will slow for me. I will linger over each day's details in the evening and relive it all and time will not progress linerally but will do a few loopy loops as I refuse to move forward until I have revisited the past.

A (rare) family pic on K's 5th birthday.

A girl has got to eat!

First homemade meal in our (kinda) new home!

Why moving is less fun than a simultaneous root canal + colicky newborn + worst hair day of your life

The pictures speak for themselves.

Nordstrom, aka dress up corner

Diva!! And a diva-in-training. Adolescence should be fun, gulp.

Mermaids!

K has been fixated with mermaids lately...no doubt due to one red-headed disney princess. So we went to work with some wooden clothespins, felt, wool roving and paint.

Ariel!

Joy

You think you are a cynic. And then you birth children. They in turn teach you to understand true joy, every day, in every moment, spontaneously and without reservation.

Power struggles

After nearly 4 1/2 years, I can confidently, and with utter dismay, say that K and I are co-existing, on a daily basis, in the realm of Power Struggles. And I must also confess that I've been dealing with K's ever-growing sense of self and identity completely irresponsibly. It's AMAZING that as much as I resent how my parents disciplined me, I am perversely taking the same approach with K. It was only after I read the following article that I realized just how coercive I have been in trying to mold K into the perfectly good daughter: http://www.montessori.org/story.php?id=270. I hope to read this every morning to remind myself of the following uber important things when it comes to disciplining my first born:

1) LOVE her. In every conceivable and wildly imaginative way. Spend WAY more time telling and showing her how much I love and value and respect her than in communicating negative things.

2) Remember that misbehavior is not random or meaningless but it is communicating something. I need to understand why K is misbehaving and help her to understand it herself.

3) Give K opportunities to feel empowered so that she doesn't try to grasp for power in our relationship (i.e. give her reasonable choices).

4) Have fun and smile and laugh, even when times are difficult and stressful. Enjoy my daughter, to whom I owe so much of my soul's inspiration and delight.