January 2010 Gone Already???

For the past 4-5 years I have not been able to recall what happened in the prior months. It's as though my brain's OS resets every 30 days and wipes the disk clean. To combat this, I'm going to use this blog as a record of what just took place. Here goes:

January 2010, as recorded on February 1, 2010.

- Started the new year in San Diego where it was warm and sunny. We played on the beach and used up our Hotel Del gift certificate for multiple meals without breaking out the wallet. Did very little, activity-wise, but were well-rested and spent an entire week in each others' company.

- Returned to normal life: work, school and home projects. Drag.

- Son's class goes ice-skating each week for PE. To my surprise, he learns how to skate very quickly and does well at it. His karate class is threatened with early extinction but the email efforts of several parents to get critical mass -- at least 10 kids enrolled -- are successful and karate continues! Son comes home with uniform, belt and patches that he instructs me to sew onto uniform.

- Daughter's class continues to have dance/movement and Spanish each week. She seems to be fitting in well, enjoying her teachers, and today announced that she likes school much better because she is not as tired from it being "far away from home making me achy and with tears running down my face." OMG.

- Husband goes to Sydney for a week on business, making me grateful for the first time in my life that I'm not working. Not sure how I would deal with cooking, cleaning, meal prep, laundry, general childcare, Rx childcare, homework, reading and playing games otherwise.

- Insane thing I did because I wasn't at an office M-F: gathered and filled out forms to prove residency as precursor to registering my daughter for kindergarten. To give you a sense of scale, proof included: passports, birth certificate, marriage license, notarized deed to house, DMV registration. Spent 1 hour at school district office explaining forms and handing over originals to be xeroxed. Result: received assurance that we'd get a "conditional registration code" to enable online registration, subject to receipt of further paperwork such as a bank statement, property tax assessment and age-5 vaccinations.

- Other insane thing I did for same reason: waited 90 minutes in line, outdoors, to enroll kids for skating lessons. Was 4th in line out of about 40 parents. Was given a phone number and passcode to call next week to find out if my kids were successfully enrolled or not.

- Son's after-school schedule changes: added theater, added Cartooning Club, moved karate, moved swimming.

- Daughter's schedule changes: moved swimming.

- Started arranging playdates for kids so they can make friends at their schools and in the neighborhood.