Welp, we survived the awkward and awful first couple of weeks of school. The boys all started at different times, mid-week and sometimes staggered half-days, and I had a terribly timed business trip to NYC that coincided with much of the “new school year” meetings/orientations/meet the teacher events, meaning the Prof had to handle much of it alone. Since it all stretched over two weeks, I did get some Back To School Parent duties as well, so I didn’t entirely miss the fun. We have each also gotten at least 40 emails over the last two weeks from the boys’ two new schools, and I keep mixing up which email goes to which school. Back to school is NOT my favorite time of year. However, now the boys are all firmly ensconced in their new schools and next week is our first full, normal week.
Jack has moved to a new and different private middle school that is very nurturing and supportive. Jack has never done transitions well, and the whole first week he thoughtfully and maturely explained to me how crippling his anxiety was, which did wonders for my own anxiety let me tell you. But he’s super good at naming his feelings and coming up with ways to deal with them (he asked me for a stress ball so I got him one from work that has yarn hair and a face, and it became his friend “Jim” all week). He explained almost clinically that he was terribly homesick for both his old school and our house, and he was having small fluttery panic attacks, but he was dealing with them by deep breathing and squeezing his stress ball, and closing his eyes and reminding himself that the feeling would pass. While listening to this on our drive to school, I felt both elation at how badass this kid is at confronting tough feelings head-on, and also extreme guilt about passing my clinical anxiety on to my kid. In brighter news, on Thursday when I picked him up in carpool, he bounded out of the school and said “Do you see that giant tall kid? He’s my FRIEND! I had a GREAT DAY!” and while we aren’t out of the anxiety woods yet, the Giant Tall Friend was a heartening development.
The two Littles, Liam and Craig, both got into a great public school through our weird lottery system. I have complained at length here about New Orleans school lottery weirdness and I don’t have the energy to rehash it today – suffice to say our public charter system is awful, but through some sort of magic we got both little boys into a very good public charter and they are doing great there. The Littles are better at transitions, and have absorbed their switch to the new and much bigger school without any issues. I’ve had a little trouble navigating some of the changes (e.g. a LOT more homework), but all in all we’re very happy.
We did have one last hurrah before school started – a week at my parents’ house. We do a July week at my in-laws’ and an August week at my parents’ every summer – that plus rotating Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays means the kids get at least two weeks with each set of grandparents each year, an important part of their early lives. We had a great time in Nashville, although I was somewhat immersed in trial prep. Please enjoy a photo roll from a really awesome trip to the Williamson County Fair, which is what most of the below pictures come from.
Coasters 
Fiends for rides 
Girls! 
Nana 
Jack and the pogo stick stunt men 
Farm boys 
Fishin’ 
Milkin’ 
Random table
The fair was hot, but the tents were cool, and rain came in the afternoon to bring temps down.
I became obsessed with photographing the prize chickens in my iPhone portrait mode. (Plus my sister and her daughter.)
I mean, I am not remotely tempted to own chickens (kind of the “thing” these days but really NOT MY BAG) but these beauties were stunning.
Fair food
After making the rounds at the fair, we had lunch at Famous Dave’s with 30-50 feral hogs, and one of us took a nap.
That was a good evening in Tennessee.
The rest of the week, we generally hung out, letting the cousins spend time together, and facetiming with my hugely pregnant Texan sister who could not make the trip with her toddler due to the gestation issues.
I also obsessed over my newest nephew – Jacob, the superstar. He is an extremely chill and happy baby, and we had a lot of fun with him.
We always enjoy our family time. On this trip, there were five kids, and the spread was close to a match to the spread between me and my youngest sister (I am the oldest of five). I marveled quite often at the chaos of five kids, and what managing them all must have been like for my mom. What a trip! Jack was an excellent older brother/cousin – he pushed the baby in circles in the stroller sometimes to get him to fall asleep, he fed bottles, he entertained. He did not change diapers yet (something I KNOW I did for my youngest sister, when I was Jack’s age), but maybe with the next baby due in September to the hugely preggo sister, he’ll get that experience. 😉 Jackie, oldest cousin on both sides, is an extremely cute little Dad In Training.
Hannah was very proud of her help with diapers. “I gave the diapers and diaper changing fings but I didn’t change his diapers because I fink there was poop and pee pee in there and that’s yuck.”