# of tears shed on Preschool Morning: 0

(hurrah!)

# of times Scotty wandered into the wrong classroom: 1

# of times after this incident I contemplated having him micro-chipped:
    14

# of times I Google'd "micro-chipping your child" on my phone: 1

# of times Scotty looked back at me as he entered the right classroom: 0

# of high-fives exchanged between Henry's mom and I as we headed to
    the parking lot: 3

# of glasses of pink champagne enjoyed over lunch with friends: 1.5

# of minutes Scotty used the potty at school: 0

# of minutes Scotty slept at school: 0

# of minutes Scotty spent eating lunch: 0

# of children sitting in their chairs quietly, waiting for dismissal, when I
    walked up: 11

# of children plastered to the window, cheeks smushed on the
    glass, yelling, "Momma!": 1

(guess who?)

# of times I considered bolting out of dismissal pick-up line to smush my
    own face against the glass and yell, "Scotty! Momma's here for you!": 4

# of long looks given to me by Scotty's teacher as she gave me a quick
    rundown of the day: 2

# of times I wondered what lovely thank you gifts we were going to
    have to buy her for dealing with our sweet but stubborn little Bear: 3

# of minutes it took for our sleep-deprived, hungry Bear to meltdown in
    the car on the way home: 12.3

# of cups of frozen yogurt it took to placate him into calming down: 1

# of minutes Hurricane Scotty raged in the backyard later that night,
    emotional, exhausted, and in a general state of toddler malaise: 22

# of weeks left in the school year: who knows?

# of weeks it will take him to acclimate: again, who knows?!

# of times I thought to myself, "One day, when the Bear is an adult and
    married with children of his own, we'll all have a big laugh about this":     too many to count

Happy Preschool Eve, everyone.

The Bear is all packed; he's ready to go. In less than 24 hours, our little guy will matriculate into American's educational system. There is no turning back now.

I still have my reservations, yes. It's a very big step to turn over your only child to a bunch of strangers for six solid hours, and he has some rather specific daily habits. I mean, the kid takes 25 minutes to poop. Are they going to give him time to poop? Will they rush him? Does someone help him in the bathroom? Why didn't I ask his teacher this during the Open House?

Speaking of the Open House, which did a great job calming my fears, I really wish they would have had two Open Houses: one for us newbie parents, and one for "those that have done this before." The reason I say that is because I'm fairly certain Scotty's very nice, and very capable-looking teacher gave us the subtle, though gracious, brush-off. Yes, I may have asked her fifteen rapid fire questions, and perhaps we were monopolizing her time a bit (as 11 other families stood quietly by, looking down at their folded hands silently), but I had legitimate concerns. And despite her very thoughtful answers to my questions, I still have about a million others.  Let's be honest - the logistics of drop-off still confound me a bit. Anyone else?

I've decided to channel my anxiety in home repair projects. Because when the going gets tough, the tough go to Home Depot! Brian came home on Saturday to find me fighting with a new coat rack in the laundry room and six new holes in the wall. I've also successfully moved quite a bit of stuff around in our house, making it impossible for Brian to find anything anymore, and cleaned out the garage.

Scott, on the other hand, was deeply concerned his teacher was not a zebra. See, dear friend and pen pal Chai read the blog last week and immediately sent us a copy of "Llama Llama Misses Mama." (thank you Chai!!) Great read and perfect for calming those pre-preschool fears. The teacher in the book, not surprisingly, is a zebra. And the whole way home, having only read the book once earlier that morning, Scotty continually pointed out to me that Mrs. G was in fact, not a zebra. I'm really hoping she wears a striped shirt tomorrow.

So, there you have it. It begins tomorrow. I just hope they love him as much as we do.

This morning, in a moment of complete and utter desperation to stop the tears (his, not mine), I told Scotty the whooper of all parenting lies.

I told him school was just like his favorite place in the whole world: Target.

We are so screwed.

But at least he stopped crying.

In a related story, we've also started to put aside money for his future therapy appointments. That is, if he doesn't first escape from preschool and wander the Earth like Caine from Kung Fu.

With the open house/orientation tomorrow, my anxiety about school is getting worse, not better.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night with a new fear - what if he gets out? What if Scotty escapes the friendly confines of his school and starts wandering around? Say he makes it across the very large, very busy street directly outside the school: then what?  With this new "unclear" speech issue Dr. Awesome planted in my brain yesterday, our little Bear will not be able to communicate with the outside world. How would anyone ever know he is ours? He doesn't know how to get home. He doesn't know his last name. He thinks Dada works at the pig farm and Mommy lives at Junior League. He probably won't say much other than "Dammit, Jesus!" and demand more trucks. 

And besides, when asked his name and age, he usually replied with a very clear, "Henry. I'm six."

Can you microchip a kid? Seriously?

Age: 3 years, 4 days

Height: 39.5 inches

Weight: 35.2 pounds

Clinical impressions: the Bear appears to be on target for all of his developmental milestones. However, Dr. Awesome felt as though some of his speech was "unclear" and this may warrant further assessment.

Huh?

I tried to keep calm as she told me this, but I will admit, I'm confused. I was really excited for our three-year well check. I sat in the exam room with a mixture of eagerness and anticipation, happy to show off our young child like he was a potted plant or something. Look, Doc! We managed to keep it alive for another year! Gold star!

And then her comment just totally deflated me. I'm trying really hard to not assume the Defensive Mom Posture (i.e. "No, he's perfect. Where did you get your medical degree again?") but I don't really see a problem with his language. I understand every word he says perfectly. Hell, I practically read his mind most days. Isn't that what Moms are supposed to do? I know that all mothers report they can understand their children, even when the rest of world has no idea what they are saying, so I understand I am not a reliable source of information. But really? Does this really warrant further evaluation?

I know I can be a difficult patient (somewhere, my husband and  my mother are nodding their heads quietly), so I did not take the news kindly. I hammered questions at her in a vaguely snotty tone. "What exactly do you mean? Can you elaborate? Can you tell me what you are hearing or seeing that is a concern? What is our next step? What do you recommend? How significant is this?"

Dr. This-Close-To-Getting-Fired stammered a bit (and probably flagged Scotty's chart with the "Difficult Parent" sticker), so I called a friend and asked for a second opinion. She assured me that Scotty's speech is excellent though she's happy to provide referrals if necessary. (Tip for Parents-to-Be: seek out Mommy friends that also have helpful jobs, like audiologist and pediatrician. Stack the deck in your favor; you'll save yourself a million in co-pays).

So, I don't know. Is our doctor getting kick-backs or something? If cab drivers can get kick-backs from strip clubs, who knows if pediatricians are in cahoots with other specialists. I mean, this is Vegas. Poor Prince Harry can't even party naked without the world finding out. Nothing about this town surprises me anymore.

Despite this little hiccup, the Bear appears to be a healthy and happy little guy. In the meantime, here's a quick run-down of the Bear, Year Three:

Current likes:
Trucks, cars, street sweepers, car transporters, any construction        
    vehicle, tow trucks, ... .... (this list could literally go on forever)
Chicken nuggets
Froggie (as always)
Little white bear and his Momma
his Daddy
Indiana Grandma
Compressors
Windmills
Watching videos of cute kittens on You Tube
Bubble Guppies, particularly the one where Albie falls off his tricycle
    ("Call the Clambulance!)
Looking for "super letters"
Strawberry smoothies
Lollipops
Henry
Building castles
Playing Batman (i.e. playing with his cars on his car table. Not sure how     this one got named...)
His big boy bed with his extra-special pillow cases (from Indiana
    Grandma, naturally)
Uncle Jim
Bossing his parents around
Carson and Sam
Punctuation (no joke...he loves exclamation marks)
Jackson and Alex
Saying "Quesadilla!" to Lauryn
Grocery shopping (in particular, pushing his own cart)

Dislikes:
Camp
Beets
Dogs, except JD ("They chew on me")
His pediatrician (oh wait, that's me)
Walking quickly
Keeping Play-Doh colors separate
The car seat in Brian's car ("It hurts my booty")

The next year should bring some big changes...can't wait to see how it unfolds!

Preschool is looming.

And I'm a mess.

I vacillate between being soooo ready (i.e. "you call that a nap?") and worrying that my tiny, little boy is much too young to wander out into that great big world of ours. I actually had a fleeting moment today when I considered scraping the whole idea and home-schooling him.

I made the critical error of reading this story on Yahoo about a mother who still loves and hates her daughter's 1st grade teacher from twenty-one years ago. She loved the teacher because she taught the little girl to love learning and to be smart and independent; she hated her because the daughter learned that year to move away from her mother and think for herself. It was poignant, sweet, and heart-felt, and by the end of it, I was literally weeping on my couch. Matters are further compounded by our dear little Bear who comments on every person, creature, or stuffed animal he sees and says, "Aw, he's sad, Momma." When I ask why, he says, "He had to go to camp. He was skerred. He wanted his Mommy." Then he comes over and wraps his chubby little arms around my knees.

And then my heart breaks into a million little pieces.

So, needless to say, the whole camp thing didn't go so well. It was only six sessions (half-days, for goodness sake! Less than 24 hours of his entire life!) but every time we are on the same road as the school, Scotty starts screaming in the backseat.

This does not bode well for my confidence. T-minus eight days.

This morning, we headed to this awesome "teacher" store on the opposite side of town. I determined that I would make a terrible preschool teacher for any number of reasons. Most are listed below.

Oh phonics! Sweet! I love phonics. And we'll do a 'letter of the day' each day...love this chart...a calendar! NIce! Oh! A book on government! Didn't I see a kid on the Today Show who knew all of the presidents? Scotty could totally do that and then we could finally meet Matt Lauer. Let's see...we'll move on to prepositions and adverbs and oh, I could use this little graph to teach him how to graph a sentence. Ew, yuck, math stuff. Hmm. We'll skip over that for now. Science? Well, crap I guess I'll have to teach him about science too. Which means I'll have to figure some stuff out. Baking soda and vinegar? Is that science?  Maybe I can outsource this one to my friend Krista...she's really smart in science. Hey look, puzzles! Of the United States! I totally need this!

And then I picked up a card that said what preschooler should be preparing for, and it said "Letter recognition, colors, creative play, and shape recognition."

No phonics?

So yeah, I came to my senses pretty quickly. I will not be forfeiting our deposit and homeschooling the Bear. I am headed to the Uniform Store tomorrow to pick out some burgandy Polos for the little guy, and we will continue on the course we set forth a year ago.

If only I could pull it together and stop crying.

::sigh::

I learned about the Skinny Muffin from my dear friend Sandy. As we sat in her kitchen on the last day she lived in Las Vegas, the movers were literally stepping around us as they packed up her house. Sandy, however, was oblivious to the chaos and calmly reached for various ingredients while chatting like it was any other day as she made me my first ever Skinny Muffin. I thought she was mixing chocolate cake batter in a coffee mug. You never know with Sandy.

Oh Sandy. I miss you, friend.

I had one eye on the movers and one eye on what she was doing. And when I got home, I immediately Googled "skinny muffin" to make sure I had all the steps correct. Apparently, this started as a Dr. Oz creation, and Lord knows I love Dr. Oz. He's slowly starting to fill the void left by Oprah in my daytime television watching. I mean, just the other day, he had a whole segment about uterine fibroids. Uterine fibroids? This man is my hero! Because we all remember me and my fibroid...the Fibroid that Launched a Thousand Blog Entries.

Anyways, what I like about this recipe is not only does each ingredient have a specific purpose, but there is virtually no mess. No pans, no bowls, nothin'. The only thing you use is a coffee mug. Really. Again, this would be an excellent time for a photo, but I'm still unable to upload pictures. Weebly, are you reading this?

So here goes: the Skinny Muffin. Enjoy!

1 egg (protein)
1/4 cup of ground flaxseed (soo good for you!)
1/2 tsp baking powder (acts as a leavening agent)
1 tsp cinnamon (regulates blood sugar)
1 Tblsp coconut oil (healthy fat)
1/2 Tblsp of blue agave (or honey; just something to sweeten it. Stevia     works too, if you are interested in cutting calories)
Any berries you may have in your kitchen (blueberries work great)

Mix all of the ingredients except the berries in a normal coffee mug. Really stir it up to make sure the baking powder is evenly distributed. Fold in the berries gently. Pop it in the microwave for 65 seconds. It may bubble over - that's okay. You might want to put a paper towel down first so avoid having to scrub your microwave later. The muffin will puff up and then sink back down, but it should be completely cooked when you take it out. Simply turn it over on a plate, slice into pieces, and enjoy! I like to eat mine with a tiny bit of Kerrygold butter (again, love those omega-3s), 4 oz of tart organic cherry juice, and my morning coffee with almond milk. There is so much flavor in the muffin and so many good things going on in it. It's also gluten- and dairy-free, and it keeps you full all morning.

Happy muffin making! Thanks, Sandy!

I wish I could claim ownership for this fabulous recipe, but I can't. It came to be from my friend Nieva who found it on a food blog who found it in a Barefoot Contessa cookbook. Considering our round-about path to its discovery (despite the fact I have literally logged hundreds of hours of Barefoot Contessa watching and somehow never made this), it is truly amazing. This broccoli recipe tastes a little bit like, well, steak. But it's still broccoli, so it has all of the wonderful health benefits of the green stuff without any of the saturated fat, dead cow-ness of steak. And it's way cheaper than steak, too. Best of all, though? Scotty ate it. He's not a super picky eater but I'm hard pressed to get a green vegetable down his throat these days that's not disguised in an almond-butter smoothie. Imagine my surprise and delight when he picked up a tree and chomped it down in three bites and then went for seconds.

I'm pretty sure angels sang in that moment. At least, to me, they did.

What's the secret, you ask? Well...I'm hesitant to type this, as I don't want anyone to freak out, but...well, you don't wash the broccoli. Okay, I should rephrase that - the broccoli needs to be bone-dry for it to roast up well. So yes, you can wash it but then you will likely need to break out the hair dryer to ensure all of the water comes off. Or, if you happen to be desert dwellers like us, simply wash the broccoli about an hour before dinner and then place it in the roasting pan, in the hot sun, to dry. I took a picture of my tanning broccoli, but the website isn't letting me upload photos these days, so please use your imagination.

Anyways, once that broccoli is dry, follow the recipe below. I omitted some stuff from the original Barefoot recipe just for the sake of ease. I mean, really, who has pine nuts readily available in their kitchen? But most of us have the stuff listed below.

Enjoy! It's deee-lish.

3 lbs DRY broccoli, cut into florets
5 Tbl olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
4 cloves of garlic, thinnly sliced
1 lemon, zested and squeezed
Parmesan cheese

Heat over to 425 degrees.

Put foil over roasting pan; add broccoli. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss with garlic. Roast for 25 minutes. You'll know it's done with tips of the broccoli are slightly brown and crispy. Sprinkle with lemon zest, drizzle with lemon juice, and sprinkle with cheese. If you are really crazy and not watching calories, give the broccoli another pass with the olive oil. Serve and enjoy!

Another variation (and another way to cut calories) is to replace the cheese with red pepper flakes. It gives it a nice kick of heat with no guilt. :-)

Tomorrow: my FAVORITE new muffin recipe (gluten, dairy, and sugar-free) courtesy of my friend Sandy. And it only takes 60 seconds to bake!

Let me set the scene for you: it's Saturday. We arrive at the zoo at the ridiculously late hour of noon. I am in a grumpy mood because Scotty pulled the ole "make poo-poo-Mama-but-it's-actually pee-pee" switch-a-roo during breakfast at Chick-Fil-A. I arrived back to the table covered in urine, steaming mad, while Scotty slid back into the booth and calmly noshed on his chicken biscuit while saying, "It was an accident, Mama." I swear the kid rolled his eyes at me. Brian took one look at his urine-covered wife (thank goodness it didn't get in my face - my chin was mere inches away from the stream) and we headed back to the hotel to change. Naturally, I underpacked for the weekend since I overpacked the weekend before (girls' trip to Santa Barbara) so my only clothing options were running pants. Naturally.

We arrived at the zoo in one piece, but Mama looked like a cranky marathoner. San Diego was experiencing some kind of heat wave that left temps soaring in the low 90s with like, 120 percent humidity. (that may or may  not be an exaggeration). We were dripping with sweat by the time we got to the entrance. (Ironically enough, my clothes were wicking away the moisture). Brian and I were determined to show the Bear a good time, so after suffering through the bug house and the snake house, we set off on the Monkey Trail. We figured monkeys first, then hippos, and we'll cap it off with the tigers. I take great pride in my navigational skills and with our trusty zoo map, we were set.

Forty minutes later, we had seen three angry monkeys and not much else. Either the map was wrong or I was losing my eyesight. Everything that was there was supposed to be someplace else. The signs in the park were ambiguously pointed in various directions. Brian and I turned the map upside down, sideways, backwards...nope, nothing worked. We could not find the hippos to save our lives. We passed the gorillas, went through the restaurant, up several flights of stairs, and through the Aviary like, six times but no f'ing hippos. My arms ached from pushing the stroller, my legs were sore from the hills, and my mood had soured even more. And why the hell were we still in the Aviary?! I don't even like birds.

We were literally lost in in the Lost Forest.

By the third pass through the restaurant, Brian muttered, "We're lost. We are never going to find the hippos. I think the zoo won," and handed me the map.

"Oh heeeeeell no," I hissed at him. (Scotty was looking at the double decker buses with interest and completely ignoring us at this point.) My inner Clark Griswald was starting to emerge. "This is family fun time. We are here to have fun. We are going to have fun even if it kills us!"

What you don't know is that ever since a rather unfortunate incident involving coloring Easter Eggs several years ago, Brian likes to tease me about my desire for "family fun time." This more often than not involves putting my family in what appears to be nice photographic opportunities, despite the fact we are all miserable and no one is having fun. He likes to fake-yell at me during such events and say things like, "Shut up! We're having fun! Smile, dammit! Now go! Have! FUN!"

God, I did it again. Stupid zoo.

I, however, was in no mood for contemplation. I was just getting revved up and tenacity is my middle name. "The zoo may have won this battle, but it has not won the war!" I shouted at him.  "We are bigger than this zoo! Be MORE than the zoo!" I grabbed the map and stalked off to the nearest zoo employee.

I'd like to think I didn't make a scene, but I'm sure we did. People were pulling their children away from us at an alarming pace. The nice women with the highlighter was happy to point out where we had gone so terribly wrong (you're supposed to go through the Aviary twice?) and even offered some road markers ("man with a hot dog cart") for added detail.  I'd like to thank my husband for having the patience and flexibility to roll with the punches. I know, however, we weren't the only people lost because when a woman pushing a stroller with a sleeping baby and an overly-active toddler asked me where the tigers are and I told her, she promptly burst into tears. I think she was tired of the Aviary, too.

And just in case you are wondering, the hippos were dead asleep by the time we got there. Because honestly, only people having family fun time were dumb enough to be traversing through that heat.

...so yeah, the blog is dark this week. Sorry about that.

In the meantime, enjoy this yummy smoothie recipe. I've been blending up a storm lately after I realized smoothies are the easiest way in the world to eat my most dreaded vegetable, kale. Also, tart cherry juice allegedly helps sore muscles recover faster and is packed with healthy antioxidants. (Thank you, Dr. Oz). So I like to call this smoothie my "Hill Day Recovery."

1 cup fresh or frozen strawberries
1/4 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
4 oz tart cherry juice
handful of kale, stems and ribs removed
1/4 cup low-fat or non-fat Greek yogurt
ice

Blend away! It's delicious. The Bear always requests "red moo-ties" and he sucked this one down. It made me feel like I got one over the little guy. Eat your fruits and veggies, kid! Muahahaha! :-)