not necessarily in this order

One : It’s been a minute… well, a month. Everything’s been a lot and my mental bandwidth was in survival mode. On the other side, I have this wonderful realization that it’s important to be a person amongst all the tasks and am excited to come back here and to comment sections and be just that.   Two : Lil Momma has one more month of 7 th  grade. We can do this. She turns 13 in 2 months. It’s just wild.   Three : We just survived 3 straight weekends of dance competitions, 2 of which were at a high school with very little parking. She did so well across the comps in her team dances and solo, as well as being a good teammate and supportive presence, but I have to say I am incredibly glad to have 2 weekends off before recital June begins. A big personal win was being able to do these 3 comp weekends on my own and handle her and food and the hotels and all her props remembering that last year I attempted to do the 1 st  comp 2 weeks after my foot/ankle surgery and ended ...

  Lil Momma and the Mr. are visiting family down south this week and I’ve been on my own with Bella, our dog. To be clear, they didn’t ditch me!! I’m just not walking fast or far enough for it not to be a drag or a liability on that type of vacation.   To be honest, LM and I were both a little shook - we’ve never been apart this long!! It’s one of those times I’m glad she has a way to text me and we got to talk each night about her adventures (which included dip dyeing the bottom 6 inches of her hair purple - an early birthday present!). In honor of my week here at the house by myself, here are 5 random Friday thoughts about being alone: One : I realized that I’m very rarely alone in a situation where I can just be. I’m alone in my car on my ride to work or driving back from dropping LM off somewhere, but this week was different because I could just exist in this space and be.  Two : Back when the Mr. traveled for work and LM was a baby on steroids who never slept, I alwa...

 A handful of thoughts from the end of June chaos… One Poor Lil Momma had a freak accident last weekend, but luckily it was more annoying than painful. Saturday night, she was headed upstairs to get ready for bed and remembers hitting her palm on the railing - but not hard enough to say anything (and she would say something, haha!). When I came up to hang with her, I noticed her ring finger was bent down and asked her about it. We quickly realized she couldn’t raise it without her other hand or assistance. Strangely, I didn’t even have to ask Dr  Google what it was (although I’ve googled a lot since haha!): When LM was a toddler, she randomly developed “tr!gger finger” in her thumb that had to be released via surgery; here’s hoping this one will have some other options. A trip to Urgent Care left her with a splint and an appointment at the orthopedic surgeon’s next week… Two …which leads us to the camp she was supposed to attend this week and next saying she couldn’t come un...

I expected this week to be frantic, but I didn’t expect it to be so messy. Oof. A quick roundup of what’s been up over here via  middle school  edition of the  Friday   Five .   One: Team / Class Assignment Day In preparation for the school year to begin, we usually receive homeroom/team assignments the middle Friday in August followed by class schedules in the parent app the following week. This is quite the stressful day for Lil Momma; she has never ended up on a team with a friend and it’s always a lot of feelings, made more feelingsful this year because of the move to middle school. The assignments were supposed to  come out at 5pm . My plan was to pick LM up from YMCA camp at 3:45, go get dessert first, and then to navigate the feelings together as the Mr. and I checked each team’s post on social media for friends in her classes (or, as is the way with tweens, frenemies and nemeses, too).   BUT,  PLOT   TWIST : the email came out  a...