"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

I went to dinner the other night with 2 of my closest friends and had a lesson in what exactly this bible passage means.  (said friends, you know who you are, the beginning of this post may upset you, but keep reading :) ).

The evening of our dinner arrives and as I am getting ready to leave, I'm already getting annoyed.  I keep thinking "I know they will be late, I just know it.  Here I am trying to rush to get out the door to get there on time, but they will be late anyway"  I started listing off the number of times in my head these girls were late meeting me out, while perfect-little-ole-me is always on time.  I stewed about it in the car on the way to the restaurant, and low and behold I get a text saying they would be late.  So, I'm pretty much fuming (pouting) by the time I get to the restaurant.  I consider even just leaving, just to teach them a lesson. 

Enter friends about 10 minutes late.  I didn't pay much attention to either of them, just stared at the menu.  Friend #1 asks what is wrong.  I have a little voice in my head that says "Is it really that big of a deal?"  And before I can stop, my big mouth is already moving.  I go into a rant about how they are always late, how disrespectful it is, how I rarely get to see them yet they don't get there on time, about how I'm always trying to get "dates" together but they are too busy..yada yada yada.  Both friends sit stunned for a minute.  And yes, it is as awkward as you are imagining.   Here is the response I was expecting "Oh Suzy, we are so so sorry!  We promise to never ever be late again.  We will agree to every event you suggest and schedule our entire lives around your needs".  Wanna take a guess how much of that actually happened? 

Instead, a whole can of whoop-ass was opened on my faults.  MY faults....I-have-faults???  Whhhaaattt?  Who knew???  As this ass-whipping is taking place, my logical voice, the one who wondered if this was a "good idea" was actually laughing.  I tried desperately to deflect, but Friend #1 isn't down for that.  I started it, now we have to finish it.  But...but...this was supposed to be about ME pointing out something wrong with THEM.  How dare they turn the tables.  Hmph. 

The information they are sharing isn't settling too well in my belly, I wonder, why have they kept it to themselves for so long?  Why didn't they pout like me, ruin a perfectly good birthday dinner (oh, yah, did I mention that is was Friend #2's BIRTHDAY dinner???) and air their grievances? 

Then Friend #2 says "Suzy, we have been friends for so long, for so many years.  And while there are little things we don't necessarily like, we love YOU, so those little things don't mean anything.  So ya maybe we have a tendency to be a little late, but in the grand scheme, is it that big of a deal?"

No.  Its not that big of a deal.  Lesson (hopefully) learned.  On many different levels.

We ended up having a wonderful birthday dinner and I still have 2 very dear friends (I hope :) ).

Here we go again!

Well, so much for keeping my blog up to date.  It has been 6 months since I have posted anything.  The last thing I wrote about was wearing a scrunchie to a playdate or something.  I'm happy to see they have added spell check since I last blogged.  You will notice a new Blog name and Design.  I'm like Oprah.  I go away for a few months and come back with a bang! 

There has been A LOT of activity in our household.  Most has been good, others just growing pains of a family. 

Where to begin...

We had an amazing summer.  I did a ton of fun things with the boys.  Some highlights: went swimming (a lot), Owen took swimming lessons (and did great) at Little Fishes,  Owen went to the circus and to see a Pirate show, went to a carnival, hmmm...I meant to keep a diary of what the kids did all summer and that lasted until day 2.  So, now I can't remember.  I just know we had FUN. 

Overall Owen update.  He is doing so good.  He is a little stinker, but is really becoming his own person.  We had an apt just a few weeks ago with his DAN (Defeat Autism Now) doctor and she was really impressed with him.  He is in his 2nd year of special education pre-school at Wren Hallow and seems to be really happy.  We had some concerns about putting him back in special-ed, we didn't think he belonged there, but he is flourishing and happy when he comes home.  So we are putting our own ideals aside, for now, and going with it.  Owen LOVES to swim and even puts his head under the water when taking a bath to practice his bubbles.  He could stay in the pool for hours (which one Saturday he actually did stay in the pool for 6 hours!).  Owen's 4th birthday was Aug 15th.  We celebrated with a small picnic with a Toy Story theme.  He started USA gymnastics a couple of weeks ago.  This is a really strict gym class for young kids.  Owen seems to really like gymnastics (Little Gym anyway) so we wanted to step it up a notch to see if he could handle more of a challenge.  We'll see how it goes.  He seems to like it so far. 

Levi update.  Little Levi has a temper, you do not want to get him mad.  But, he is also the sweetest,cutest freaking baby!!  Man, he is a lover.  He wants to hug and kiss all day long.  Just as long as he gets to eat 11 out of 12 hours of the day, he is happy.  (He walks around all day long saying "eat eat eat, I eat eat eat".  And...he really does want to eat!!).  I started writing down his words to make sure he was on track with language, but he says so much that I quit doing it.  We are pretty sure he is good to go with communicating :)

I launched The Toddler Logger in April.  This has been a really exciting venture.  Things have been slow recently, but I haven't had much time to dedicate to it.  I had a minor setback with being rejected by a magazine that had previously planned to run a feature of my product.  That one hurt, but its just business not personal right?  ( I think that saying is B.S.). 

Still working Part-Time, which I love...it totally keeps me sane and makes me appreciate my days that much more with the boys.  Barclay and I no longer live together....  JUST KIDDING!  Just wanted to see if anyone was still reading :-)

Thats enough for now.  Sorry, I know this one was pretty bland, but gotta set a baseline...let you know that I didn't run off, leave my family, become a lesbian and dye my hair purple or something.  Although......