2013: A Review

Happy New Year!

New Year’s is one of my favorite holidays alongside Halloween and the 4^th of July. I love the romantic notion of new beginnings, hope of change and betterment. I also love the organizational quality of putting some boundaries around periods of time. I know there is the arbitrary component of dividing time, but don’t ruin my romantic fantasy moment!

2013 was a nice year, although it went very quick. I think it felt quicker than most because I bought a postcard calendar last year, and at the end of the month, you cut the postcard out and mail it to someone. I had high expectations of doing that, and yet I sent 2. Two of twelve. The months would go so damn fast! So Jesse’s mom, Ellen and my roommate from college, Catherine, you are the lucky 2!  

And since I’m a glutton for punishment, I thought I would try to do the same thing this year…maybe I’ll get 4 mailed!

So some highlights for us in 2013: 

The year got off to a running start when I ran my first 5k on my 29th birthday. It was great! I ran with a lot of track and field people so I was one of the slower ones (not sure why I signed for that one in stead of a more general population 5k...a year later, still don't know why), but it was fun to do and though I would say that I don't like running that much, I can see the mental and physical benefits of it. I have a wonderful friend, Kris, whom I've ran with this year (and her big, protective dog Tuvok) that have made the morning runs not only great, but actually happen.

Go, go, go! Running in Golden Gate Park!

Also last January, I had the brilliant idea that I should re-learn French and when my mom comes over to help with the kids (which she did almost daily) we could speak in French and teach the kids. This was fueled by a lot of things: living close to my mom, keeping closer contact with my family in France, rediscovering my French side and (warning: promotional plug) the book Bringing Up Bébé. I don’t recommend parenting books, ever. But I will break that covenant to recommend this book.  I don’t want to get too tangential, so I will do a post solely on that book later, but the short of it is that it changed my parenting style immensely.  

 

Ben at a Bastille Day Celebration

Speaking French at home and implementing French culture was a very exciting idea for me, as I was pretty depressed with the daily grind of taking care of the kids. By the way, in case you ever wondered what twins are like, they are insane. I repeat, they are insane. If you ever meet someone with twins, give them a hug and tell them, “Take courage, you are doing the impossible.” Every time I meet someone with twins (I can pick out the set of twins from half a mile away, I swear I can sniff them out), we have a moment. It’s like we lock eyes, look into each others' souls and say, “God help us.” And whenever someone says, “Well, just think if you had triplets, or you were Octomom.” No, I can’t. My mind shuts off and all I see is white space. There is just nothing I can say or think, besides “Get help, immediately.”

Don't be fooled, they're crazy.

Anyways, back to the French. So my French was pretty limited back in January. It’s better now that I’ve worked on it for a year but between that and having to constantly remind my mom to “Parle français, s’il te plait!” over and over (she kept reverting back to English and would say, “But, they can’t understand me!”), it was not exactly going fast enough for me. So I found a wonderful French school in the area. It is pretty expensive, but wow, the program is amazing. The teachers are wonderful, and it is quite different that the public school Ella went to last year, which we liked well enough, but the contrast was striking (and I guess the difference should be noticeable at the price!).

Ella took to French very quickly. She had a hard time at first and she still complains about it, but I let it run off my back. I just tell myself, “She’s 5. If she had her way, she would watch TV all day.” Though, I’m much more comforting with her. I know it’s hard. It’s very hard. And it’s so good for brain development. She is really, really challenged by it. She is picking it up so quickly that she is moving to a higher class level this week. I’m so proud of her.

C'est ma petite fille qui j'adore. (This is my little girl whom I love)

Ben, Lacy and I attend a Moms and Tots French class at the school 2 times a week, which is more difficult for me. The twins, especially Ben, cling to me with death grips. They are pretty freaked out by the whole endeavor. But my spot of hope is that Lacy is learning fairly fast and Ben says, “Fini!” after everything: the last piece of broccoli, putting on his shoes, or turning off the TV.

It also get us out of the house and the best part has been all the songs we’ve learned. We can sing and dance together and the kids love, love, love the French songs. We sing them all day long.

So implementing French language and culture has been a big highlight of this year.

Another highlight for me was getting a part time job (which I had to get for the French School to work). And it is a wonderful online, work-from-home job. It’s pretty technical, but the basic of it is I’m proofreading transcripts from financial conference calls that are made at the end of every fiscal quarter. I’ve had to learn a whole new language of investor, business terms, but I love it and I’m really so thankful for it. (Another really cool perk is getting the inside scoop from all these huge companies because I’m listening to the CEOs, CFOs of the companies, TimeWarner, Google, huge pharmaceuticals, I find it pretty fascinating.)

I’ve learned that I need something to do besides caring for the kids. I love being with them AND I need to have a creative outlet with immediate, positive results, cause there are days (many) with the kids, that I think, “What the hell am I doing? I’m ruining these peoples’ lives.” Let’s face it, if I’m looking for immediate results, raising kids is just not where it’s at.

Another highlight was attending Jesse’s step-brother Andrew’s wedding in Georgia. We left the twins with my parents and went for the weekend. It was a gorgeous, Southern wedding and one of my first times in the deep South. I loved it! I also got to have a quick cup of coffee with my dear friend, Emily, whom I hadn’t talked to in a while. It was life-giving to see her again and catch up, albeit brief. (Emily, if you’re reading this, I had a great time and I want to keep in touch with you! Let’s make it happen!)

 

Andrew and Magen's beautiful wedding

In May, my cousin, Marc and his wife, Jessica visited from France. This was such an exciting moment of the year for us. We made a wonderful connection with them and we created a friendship that I hope will continue, despite the distance. Seeing them also added hope to my dream of taking the kids to France for a summer. (And now I think it’s really going to happen!)

Enjoying a freezing and amazing (Panda hit a homerun in the bottom of the 9th to win!) Giants game

The rest of the year was pretty quiet, overall, and we kept our summer plans light.

Then in the fall, I was hit with a bomb when my plans of having Ella attend French school in the morning and Kindergarten in the afternoon completely fell through. (French school is not a certified K school, so for legal requirements Ella had to be enrolled in an American school) I had been planning this with the school district since May, but it seemed that they didn’t get what was going to happen until it actually started happening, and said, “Oh, we can’t do that. You have to choose one school.”

The problem arose in her being about 30 minutes late to Kindergarten, it’s just not allowed by state regulations even though they said they would make an exception. (mmmm, hmmm, side eye at PUSD)

So, we scrambled and thanks to a wonderful recommendation, (Thanks, Jess!) I enrolled Ella in a homeschool program. So here we are, I’m homeschooling Ella in the afternoon and I have not one clue what we will do next fall. So far it’s going well, but it’s Kindergarten, so how can it not go well? First grade and on is a little more daunting, so we will see….

Thanksgiving was very nice, with Karen and Katie flying out for the holiday. It made our Thanksgiving very special, and it was nice to have them here for our crazy Birthday week with my mom (24^th), Ella (26^th) and Jesse (28^th).

Happy Thanksgiving from CA (After this photo we all promptly removed our sweaters...it was so warm!)

These are the highlights of 2013 and reading through them makes it sound like we had this great, amazing year, when 75% of the time it has been really, really hard. The kids, Jesse’s school, the daily chores, thinking about what we are going to do next year are all very overwhelming at times, and I can get very, very down. We are away from a lot of our friends and most of our family, and staying home all day is very isolating. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind in this tiny little apartment that feels many days like an island. I do hope to blog more this year to stay connected with everyone.

So that was our 2013 in a nutshell, well, a large nutshell.  Are you still awake? If you are, kudos to you and I wish you a wonderful 2014 with lots and lots of blessings and good things! 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!