Category: Life in General

Dear Teacher,

I’m sorry we were late today. I was sure we’d be on time. I hope you believe me when I say that I had the best intentions.

Everyone went to sleep on time last night so waking them up today was pretty simple; my 5 year old was hard at work in the playroom coloring when I came out of my room. Some mornings he gets dressed as soon as he wakes up, but today didn’t seem to be one of them.

My 12 year old was already in the shower – the day seemed to have all the high hopes of getting there on time. And today is Wednesday, when we need a few extra minutes because of the coinciding drop off time at the neighboring public school.

I prepare protein shakes, the breakfast of the week that everyone still approves of, and set them out on the counter. I’m humble enough to know not to brag about this healthy breakfast choice because the kids can change their mind about it at any given time.

I head over to wake up the rest of the kids. One by one sleepy eyes open and I cheerfully remind everyone of the order of tasks for the morning; negel vasser, brush teeth, get dressed, brochos and eat; when all that’s done they can read or play.

Continue reading “Dear Teacher, Sorry we were late” →

“Don’t let go of me! Promise you won’t let go of me!” Was the shrieking sound heard from the pool during swim lessons.

But it wasn’t from a scared five year old learning to swim.

It was from a grown mom of 11; it was from 44 year old me. I was tackling my fear and learning how to  swim.

And I was terrified that my swim teacher would let go of me as she held me in a back float, which to me felt like a very dangerous activity.

I’ve dreamt about knowing how to swim for years, but it seemed impossible.

Continue reading “Could I really learn to swim?” →

It’s amazing how you don’t notice how much stuff you have until you have to pack every last tiny bit of that stuff into a cardboard box.

And then suddenly you realize you are drowning in stuff.

Not just Stuff.

But STUFF.

An endless amount of it.

Somehow, the more you pack, the more you have left.

“It’s just impossible!” I proclaimed to my husband many times during the packing week.“We are just not going to be able to do this. We have too much stuff!

He would calmly remind me, “How do you eat an elephant?”

My answer is always the same; “You don’t!”

Nope, wrong answer.

Continue reading “About moving & STUFF” →

Everything that there is to learn about mindset, resilience and perseverance I learnt today at Costco, while trying to put in contact lenses. Granted, there’s so many life lessons going on at Costco in general; like the power of the human mind that can convince you that you urgently need a kayak when really you came to buy toilet paper. But today I’m referring only to the optical department, and the experience of trying to put in contact lenses for the very first time.

It was something I never thought much about until my teenage daughter got contacts 2 years ago; I started wondering why I was still wearing glasses. I was ready to change things up a bit and this was a good and simple solution.

So here I was at Costco for my 11am appointment. 

“How long should I give?” I casually asked the helpful contact-lense-coach.

“We will give it up to an hour,” was her equally casual reply.

Continue reading “How I learned perseverance & resilience from contact lenses” →

Here’s the thing about systems – they don’t actually solve the problem. They don’t make the challenge go away. They do make you feel in control and they do make it easier to put into words what’s not working. But the system itself isn’t magic. It’s the people keeping (or not keeping) that system that hold the keys to success. 

That brings me to the Sock Crisis.

In this house of many children there are many, many socks. Many many boys’ socks. Way back when boy number four was born, I felt I needed a sock system, and quickly.

I had one girl at the time, so that made her system simple. One girl, one bin. Done. For my boys, I needed a new route.

Before making a system, I had to establish a policy. And the policy was: only solid colors. Life is too short to spend so much of your time trying to pair up small dots and big dots and wide stripes and medium stripes without making mistakes.

Continue reading “The Sock Crisis” →