One Year Later

I have been blogging for a year now. Hard to believe. It's also hard to believe that I'm another year older. I celebrated (and celebrated and celebrated) my birthday over two weeks ago. On the day of, I got my hair done, met my girlfriends at my favorite Thai restaurant and then got my toes done with Jules. And to top it off, Mark, Syd and I went with my parents to Cheesecake Factory for dinner that night! The next night Mark and I met some more friends at Margot, my favorite "trendy" restaurant. We mostly drank wine and laughed. To round off the eating frenzy, we had dinner at my parents' later that weekend. Betsy made mouth watering chicken enchiladas and cheese cake........

Five pounds. In case you were wondering how many pounds I have packed on. FIVE! Now, I don't think I gained them all during my birthday week, but it has definitely been in the nine weeks since school started!

And how do I know it has been nine weeks since school started?? Why, report cards came out today, of course! There were no surprises. We had our parent/teacher conference last week and Miss Robinson went over everything with us. Our favorite quote from Syd's teacher: "Sydney is showing a lot of leadership skills for a Kindergartner - some may call it bossy - but I choose to call it leadership!" We laughed. We live with this child and are no strangers to her personality traits. I was so nervous beforehand. I guess every parent wants their child to be the smartest and most well-behaved. But it seems that Syd has trouble being a good listener sometimes and she has not quite mastered writing her lower case letters and the number 2! These things were outweighed by the fact that Sydney is an eager participant in all activities and is empathetic toward her friends. It's a little harder to teach that stuff, huh?

So, a year ago I couldn't have predicted how things would look today. I thought Sydney would be going to a different school. I wouldn't have dreamed I'd have a part-time job. Juliana had not even gone into the studio yet. Mark's new deal was no where near done. Things look better than I would've thought back then. It has been a tough year at times, but I am better because of it. With or without the five pounds.