While he’s been interested in going on the potty for awhile now… even going on his own every once and awhile, I haven’t yet been reading to dive full in to the potty training process with my youngest. Just last week I was talking to a friend about our 2 year olds and I told her "I am not ready yet.” Because potty training is a lot of work. It takes time and patience and flexibility.

I was scrolling around on pinterest one night and a graphic caught my eye that made me stop in my tracks. It showed 2 sides of the brains and listed descriptions for left/brain right brain people.  I think often people are largely a little bit of both. However, when I looked at this graphic, it was like a portrait of my daughters. I swear my 6 year old could be the poster child for the left brained person.

I like to think of myself as a woman who can hold her own. I’m not a girly girl. I can follow a football game and I am currently 3-0 in my fantasy league. I love camping. Power outages don’t send me packing for the nearest Hilton. And I will happily kill and remove any bug that comes my way without even a squeal. However, this “tough girl” fantasy that I have of myself falls apart rather quickly when confronted with my own personal kryptonite.

We are three weeks in to our new school year. I think I FINALLY have all the kids correct curriculum (missed a few things I when I ordered it this summer) and their books organized in a way that works for them, me, and their tutors at the tutorial. I’ve done things a little differently this year, and SO FAR, it has helped our days to run more smoothly. First of all, I’ve committed to waking up before the kids every day.

Lately, I’ve been asked several times what I do with my 2 year old while I am teaching the older 3. Here’s your answer.  Yes, that would be pen mark up and down the corner of the walls in my dining room. Yes, he did that yesterday morning while I was working with the big kids in the other room and thought that scraping sound was the sound of him scraping oatmeal of his cereal bowl with a spoon.

There are lots of things that I truly appreciate about our new house. Among the top is the location. This came as a surprise to many of our friends, because at first glance the location seems less than ideal. A large majority of our life is centered 20-25 minutes away from our house… our church, our tutorial, gymnastics, and many of our friends. However, one of the most important and integral parts of our family life is located a mere 2 miles away.

The morning was going well… kids on time for tutorial, load of laundry in the washer and dryer, even took the van to the garage for some repairs. And then, because things can’t go THAT smoothly…..  Yea… turns out even the otterbox can’t protect your phone when it’s been thrown off the side of a van and run over on the side of a highway. And, no, this had NOTHING to do with the new iphone 5 coming out today.

Scott commented the other day that he feels the passage of time more noticeably at the beginning of the school year, rather than on the kids birthdays. I think he’s right. Especially this year, when I packed up three backpacks and three lunch boxes and lined up 3 kids for pictures at the front door. We have our Kindergartener, on her very first day of school ever.  Followed by our first grader.

Just one day over 2 weeks from shipping her off to the doll hospital, Kit arrived on our door step during lunch today. Her arm has been reattached and they even sent her home in a pretty hospital gown, with new socks, and her hair pulled up in a bow.  It just so happened that Daddy popped home for lunch today and she eagerly greeting him on the steps to tell him the good news.