Brady Brothers 2013

 I finally took the time to get real photos of the boys (meaning not on my iPhone!). I feel like a pathetic excuse for a photographer if I can't even do portraits of my own kids once a year! We only had about 15 minutes and Ty was being... well Ty and that made things a bit tricky. But I'm pretty happy with how they turned out all things considered.

Individuals were hard but getting the two of them together was nearly impossible.
 (As evidenced by Ty looking confused and Jay pulling his pant legs up.)

I'm going to have to do some kind of Frankenstein Photoshop voodoo to get a picture where they are both looking pleasantly at the camera at the same time.

Oh well, they are still so cute together.

Oh and the coolest part of this photo shoot is that it was done only about 5 minutes from my house at the entrance of a nice subdivision in our ward. Bet you thought it was a national park huh?

Watch Out Ladies

Jay in my new reading glasses.

Jay is not a man to be messed with!...

A few weeks ago we discovered that Jay was engaged to a girl in his preschool class named Brooklyn. She is literally the only girl in a class with 15 boys. Apparently, the boys all fight over who gets to stand next to her in line, but lucky Jay gets to eat snack with her everyday because they both bring their own lunch boxes. Well, she told Jay that they were getting married and he seemed fine with that because they were best friends and that's what best friends do. Then one day I was checking with Jay about the status of their relationship and he broke down sobbing! He told me they weren't friends anymore because she took all the red stickers. (The nerve!!) He no longer wanted anything to do with that sticker stealing primadonna! I figured it was for the best as my 5 year old isn't exactly husband material anyway. 

But then came the field trip to the farm.... (Cue the music)

Joe went with Jay to the farm (because Jay is allergic to all the animals!) to protect him from any cows, pigs, and sheep that might want to lick or bite him. Brooklyn's mom was there and she made it a point to come meet Joe and tell him what a giant crush Brooklyn has on Jay. I guess Jay's sudden hatred has come across to Brooklyn as playing hard to get and she just wants him more! To her, Jay is the one boy in class that won't give her the time of day and it's driving her crazy in love. According to her mom, Brooklyn is having a party next month and desperately wants Jay there. They are even willing to special make his own cupcake (Brooklyn has told her mom all about Jay's allergies [Cute!!]). I told Jay about the party and he REFUSES to go. I have tried all forms of bribery, trickery, sorcery and tom foolery to no avail.

Now what?! How am I supposed to tell this sweet mom of a love-struck preschooler that no amount of sugar could mend my son's bitter, broken heart? Man, with such a dramatic boy it's a good thing I'm so down to earth! ;)

The Day Has Finally Come...

Sorry for posting so much lately. 
Homework tends to inspire me to blog. 
Funny how that works!

Anyway, if anyone is at all curious as to what I have spent my entire summer creating, I'm about to show you. Drum roll please (\./.....) I now present to you selections from the new School of Life textbook:

Front Cover

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 Homework

Last Page/Sign Off Sheet

Well, I have officially left my mark on the world. I suppose I can die happy now. Oh and if anyone works with youth (church callings, school teaching, your own kids) this is a fantastic life skills program! (Would be a great personal progress project!) It talks about how we are our own "toughest opponent" and the ten A's of successful living. (Appreciation, Assist, Attitude, Aim, Associate, Align, Action, Avoid, Adapt, and Always) Contact me if you'd like a copy/copies of the book. I could probably get them to you for $5-$10 per book (printing and shipping), depending on where I have to ship it to. You can also go to the website to learn more about the School of Life Program and how you can donate or help bring it to your city:

www.schooloflifefoundation.org

(Watch the video on the news page)

One Toddler For Sale

Anyone?... Anyone?

Headless Chicken

In Relief Society today we had a lesson on talents. There was a lot of focus spent on finding new talents and not "hiding your light under a bushel." We read the parable of the talents... You know the one where one man is given five talents by the Lord and he returns to Him with ten, another man is given two and he comes back with four, and another is given only one and he wastes it so it's taken away.

Anyhow, everyone was talking about the guy with one talent. But I feel bad for the guy with five who is supposed to come back with more. I feel so overwhelmed sometimes doing things for others that are considered my "talents", I can't imagine trying to learn more! I mentioned that in Relief Society but no one seemed to get it. I'm not saying that I am so awesome or anything. I'm saying that there comes a point when you are taking on so much that when someone asks for a volunteer to design a poster in Relief Society, you keep your mouth shut! The problem is that I'm not very good at saying "no".... or keeping my mouth shut. And I tend to make the things I do look easy or I shrug things off as no big deal that really took me hours and hours to do for someone. I get a lot of, "Oh I love it... now could you just move this, change that, do it again next month?" This is usually when Joe tries to lunge across the room and cover my mouth before I can say, "No problem!"

Am I crazy and ungrateful? I really do appreciate the talents that I have been given... and I use them. Maybe I'm overusing them?! Maybe the talents that I'm supposed to develop now are time management, delegation, and self-preservation! I'm gonna go with that for now. That feels good. :)

(Anyhow, the rest of this post is just a journal entry on how busy life is... you can stop reading if you're bored.)

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Man life got busy! I can now say that I understand why parents say kindergarten is so hard on your schedule. Jay's still in preschool (we held him back so he would be the oldest in his class--July birthday) but it's everyday for three hours. Then on top of that I have night class Tuesday/Thursday, two online classes, starting the 18th I will teach for a non-profit, after school program at one high school on Wednesdays and another on Thursdays (with barely enough time to make it to class that night!), and oh did I mention that I have kids? I also have been testing out of one class (4 one-hour tests) and designing a new workbook for School of Life (the non-profit, after-school program). I'm also training for another half marathon. I have to keep reminding myself that being busy is better than being bored.

The Good News:

• The gym is at the same place as Jay's preschool and the kids think the gym daycare is like Disney Land. It also means that I can drop both kids off 30 minutes before Jay's preschool and the daycare then takes him right over to preschool so that Jay only spends 30 minutes there, I get a workout, and Ty gets a social life and a fenced in playground for an hour!
• Ty will usually take a nap while Jay's at school which allows me to study and shower after working out. 
• My abnormally strict, attendance-taking professor is magically okay with me walking in late every Thursday. (I'm thinking I will bring treats every week.)
• The non-profit I work for miraculously got $30,000 in funding!... This also meant that my workload doubled (to 4 hours a week... not complaining too much there especially because it is so rewarding.) But I was super stressed about finding sitters for the boys during those hours. Again, miraculously Joe's cousin volunteered for one day and a girl in my ward for the other. AND the boys love both of them.
• I got released from Young Women's... this is good and bad. I loved the girls and leaders but I was so overwhelmed and couldn't make it to the activities.

 I have felt the hand of the Lord this past month stretching me beyond my own capabilities. The workbook that I designed is hands down the biggest project I have EVER taken on (44 pages). At times it felt impossible to finish. My OCD brain kicked into overdrive and I thought I might never sleep again. But it's getting printed this week and we'll have it before class on the 18th. I could have never done that alone! And it's better than me... better than anything I have previously designed I mean. Truthfully, I know that it wasn't me. I know that it was so important that this got finished, so important to those kids, so important to the growth of this program, and I was just the instrument. I have a lot to be grateful for.

My Kid Is Cuter Than Yours

I was trying to think of a eye-catching title. I thought, "What kind of title would make me just have to read someone's blog post?" This is what I came up with. Because if I were to read this title in my blog feed, I'd be all, "No you didn't." (And I'd snap my fingers as if my life-long dream to wake up as a black person had really just come true... I'm not kidding.) Anyhow, after the snap I'd click on the link just to validate the fact that my kids are cuter. It's human nature. 

So now that I have your attention... here's why my kid really is cuter than yours. 

(See what I did there?)

Now guys, don't feel bad. I'm sure your kids have great personalities.

School And Food Allergies

So many people ask me what precautions we take when sending Jay to school. The truth is that sending him anywhere is terrifying but I'm learning to relax a bit about preschool. This is what we do:

• He wears his Epibelt, which has his EpiPens and benadryl inside. We got ours here. (They also sell medical ID bracelets for kids.) 
• We pack his own snack in a lunch box and put it in the preschool's fridge. This is great because his preschool is from 11:30-2:30 and they don't feed them lunch. If he were left to what the other parents brought for snack, he'd be starving by the time he got home. I basically pack him a small lunch and I can put whatever fresh fruits or healthy stuff I want in it.
• The teachers are trained on EpiPens. I bring a trainer EpiPen and demonstrate how to use it even if they have been "trained" before.
• I make sure Jay is the most popular kid in Preschool. Every teacher knows his name and face. They also know that Jay is the kid that could die if they feed him. I like to freak them out a bit by telling them past ER stories. It helps build a healthy measure of paranoia.
• Jay brings an allergy storybook to his first show and tell. This is the one we have:
  
  It's a story about a cow with milk allergies (strange but effective.) After this day, the kids start asking all sorts of questions about what things have milk in them... glue, water, etc. It's pretty cute.
• I make posters. Here's this years version:

Those are the basics. It was really scary when I first sent Jay by himself into a classroom full of milk-consuming children. When your child has food allergies, you develop an unhealthy distrust of other people's kids. You start to view them as allergen-covered monsters with sticky hands and pockets full of anaphylaxis-inducing candy. Holidays become stressful, especially in the days following Halloween and Easter. You feel like the crazy lady when you have to read labels of art supplies and hand soap. And you learn to ask serious questions as casually as possible...
"So are you doing a counting activity with those marshmallows/M&Ms/squares of death?"

It's worth it though. For so much of Jay's life I have been his social life. I have been his teacher, his protector, his secret-keeper... his everything. Now he comes home talking about what Miss Mary-Ellen taught him, what his friend (and possible first crush), Brooklyn, told him, or what funny thing his buddy, Jake, did... It's adorable and I want to cry nearly everyday because I'm so happy. I'm happy that he's safe. I'm happy that he has friends. And I'm happy that, at least for a few hours, he's a normal 5 year-old boy.