___1___

The best thing about Michael: how attached he is to me. No matter where he is or what he’s doing, when I call him he drops it and comes running, waddling from side to side with a huge grin on his face, and hurls himself full-body into my arms.

___2___

The worst thing about Michael: how attached he is to me. If I run upstairs to grab socks for a sibling, the wails are epic. Imagine what Christian has to put up when I go to novels group twice a month. He doesn’t seem to have had any “stranger” anxiety, but he doesn’t want to let me out of his sight.

___3___

The thing about Michael that makes me shake my head: If there is a stairway, he must climb it. It’s like some switch flips in his little brain: MUST-CLIMB-STAIRS-NO-WILLPOWER-CANNOT-RESIST. But the instant he gets to the top, he plops his cloth-diapered bottom on the floor and begins wailing because he doesn’t want to be up there. <smack head>

___4___

Julianna lost her first tooth this week. No, I don’t have a picture. You know why? Because it would take two adults: one to hold her head still and pull her lip down, and the other to take the picture. It would not be a picture anyone wanted to see. Trust me.

___5___

This particular front tooth has been hanging by a thread for over a week. We were sure she was going to swallow it, so finally I decided enough is enough and at bedtime on Sunday I pulled it. I went and got a plastic baggie for the tooth fairy and handed it to her. She looked at me like, “What do I do with this thing?”

“You want to leave that for the tooth fairy?” Christian asked her.

“Uh-uh!” she said, shaking her head emphatically. The nerve. What was he thinking?

“You want to put it back in your mouth?” he said, his mouth twitching.

“Uh-uh!” Silly man. Stop teasing me.

“Well, what do you want to do, then?”

She paused, giving him the no duh look of the century. “Wee–book!” (Read.)

Priorities, man. Priorities.

___6___

This business of having three children in three different schools, with three different schedules, is brutal. I pray we can find a way to put Julianna in Catholic school with Alex next year. But. I love her school. I love her teachers. And I love what she’s learning from them. As witness:

___7___

I’ve been using loseit.com for just over four weeks now, and have reached the point at which weight loss has slowed to a crawl. I am realizing that what I have begun, I must continue…pretty much forever. Desserts are going to be spotty, running to the computer to input calories before I decide what else to eat (or not to eat), doing some sort of exercise virtually every day. I think the main problem with dieting is that you always think “It’s just for a while, and then I’ll be able to…” when the truth is, the change has to be permanent, or the weight loss won’t be. On the flip side, however, is the truth that when you’re dieting you’re paying better attention to eating well and staying active, and that is a permanent lifestyle change that is good for body and soul.