Ants Marching, Time Steamrolling

I'm on the freight train of time, rolling down the tracks without much chance to breathe, let alone blog, it seems. Maybe I'm just a little ant, marching in line, carrying six times my body weight...

Somehow I've been goaded into the job of Homeroom Mom for Big Girl's class. So far the job seems pretty much right up my alley. There's a lot to keep up with as far as organizing the other parents in the class, figuring out who can help with what. Today I put all the info I have into a database to keep up with everything. It feels like a job, only the pay is diddly squat, nothing. If anything, I may be out some money to cover some things throughout the year. Oh well. It's for the good of the children.

I got Big Girl a dentist appointment for a week from Monday. That's good news. The bad news is that she'll miss part of her school day. I hope that doesn't mess her up. The upside to a mid-day appointment is less chaos in the waiting room, a big plus when you throw autism into the mix.

Little Girl is showing some massive improvements on the potty front, and it's great to be on this side of it, finally. Yesterday she initiated a trip to the bathroom, pulled her pants down independently and did the big deal! It was great to see her REALLY getting it. I'm very encouraged (what an understatement).

And her behavior has been night and day different still since last week. I really think a large part of it was me. Tonight, just before bed, she didn't want to let me brush her teeth, and I was able to get her to cooperate enough (through her tears) to let me do it. She wanted her turn first. But I know all that happens when she goes first is the licking of the toothpaste, and no teeth actually get brushed. I didn't get ruffled, and she cooperated. That's the progress. It doesn't help when it's an AWANA night and she's tired. We didn't even get home until well after bed time.

It's time to plan Big Girl's sixth birthday party. She's decided it will be a Hello Kitty party. I was able to find lots of great ideas at this website. I'll make headbands with little kitty ears for the girls to wear, we'll play "pin the bow on the kitty," stuff like that. It's going to be the best party of her life so far. Last year we moved 2 weeks before her birthday, so all I did was call 2 friends of mine together at a park near our house and we had a fine time. There were 7 little girls there between the 3 of us moms! This year is very different. Now that she's started school, she has little friends that I don't even know. I have met a couple of them from being up at the school doing some Homeroom Mom stuff, but it's nothing like all the other friends she's ever had up to now where I've known so much about the moms and their lives. These kids are little more to me than faces and names and a few stories from Big Girl.

I am thoroughly encouraged that Big Girl has actual friends in her class. I know there are a few little girls who have really latched onto her. She brings home little pictures given to her and drawn by one particular girl on at least a weekly basis. It's very sweet. This is such a good thing for my little socially-challenged darling.

And with all the goings on, I feel like I never get enough rest and I can't keep up with the house, the dishes, the laundry, putting dinner on the table. Day by day I'm falling further behind. I'm drowning here! When I do have a day like today (it was my "day off") without Little Girl under my feet, I got my oil changed (which has been hanging over me for a couple weeks), and then I got to work filling out some papers for Big Girl's school, making her birthday party invitations, printing them, addressing them, making that database for the homeroom, and then it was time to pick up kids and my "off time" was over! During all that work at the computer, I remembered to throw a frozen meal into the microwave so I'd have something to eat for lunch, but I forgot to get it out and eat it for nearly an hour! Meanwhile, there are still two baskets of laundry to fold, another load of laundry to wash and dry, the dishwasher needs to be unloaded and reloaded with what's in the sink, and I'm too tired to touch any of it. Sigh. Are you tired with me?

I helped out with Big Girl's AWANA class tonight. (I serve in AWANA for the first 2 Wednesdays of the month, and then do choir the last 2 Wednesdays.) A little boy (probably a 2nd grader) needed to use the restroom in the middle of class, so I walked him down the hall and stood outside while he went in to do what he needed to do. After about 2 minutes or so, he started screaming all of a sudden. I ran to the door, opened it and called out to him (I didn't even stick my head around the corner to preserve his privacy, you know how the men's room is). He was fine. Our building has automatic motion-sensing lights in the bathroom to save on energy. The lights had gone out on him while he was in the stall, and he's afraid of the dark. My opening the door was enough to make the lights come back on. Poor kid. It was pretty funny though. He had a good sense of humor about it afterward.

A funny, funny song popped in my head earlier today. (I nearly typed "pooped in my head". Ha!!) No description can do this song justice. Just listen for yourself. I had seen that video a long time ago, and then this weekend Hubby ran across it and showed it to me again. So now it's in my head.