Add-ee-tood of Grad-ee-tood
And that, my dear friends, is how Philadephians say "Attitude of Gratitude."Yesterday I was tweeting a list of complaints about stupid annoying shit. My bad mood was set off by the worst twenty minutes of my day, every (other) day: getting Tori ready to go to school. I don't know what it is, and I understand that she is behaving completely fucking appropriately for her age, but OH MY FUCKING GOD it's horrible. The dawdling. The whining. The "No, I don't want THAT dress, I WANT THAT [completely seasonally inappropriate summer sun dress] ONE." The running away when it's time to brush her teeth. The hair. OH MY GOD the hair; she refuses to stay still while I brush it

Things I'm Thinking About Differently Now
Thanks to you guys, I'm thinking a bit differently about everything I posted about on Thursday. Your comments are so smart and informative, it helped clear up a great deal. I thought I'd highlight some of what you all had to share.Tori, School, and the "Corn Incident"I was worried about Tori being forced to color things in a specific way, and the fact that Tori did follow direction so well made the teachers think that she should be "moved up a class." While I still don't know specifically what they mean by that (I haven't had a chance to talk to the preschool's director), I feel less alarmed about Tori

Things I'm Confused About
This morning, when I dropped Tori off at school, her teacher told me that Tori was doing "so well!" and that "she really takes direction!" and "when she does projects, she follows direction and does the right colors and stuff, so the corn is yellow at the top and green at the bottom!" Then she said the biggie: "Tori is doing so well and is so good at following direction, we're thinking she might be ready to move up a class."After I processed that she meant the corn looks like this (hey, it was very early in the morning and it took me a bit to know what the hell she meant

Prayers for Anissa
I have about a million posts in my head, but I can't write about them. All I can do is think about Anissa.This is what I know about Anissa, and it isn't that much.She is ALIVE. She is one of those people that radiates like the sun when you meet her, and you cannot help but feel more alive and happy yourself when she is near.She let me, a near total stranger, come over to her hotel room at the Type-A Mom Conference to "hang out." Then she rolled her eyes when I told her I wouldn't drink and swore about how much alcohol she'd purchased and how no one was enjoying i

Warrior Women (and perfectionism, only occasionally related)
Yesterday I met four other women for lunch. Together we five make up half of a group of women that I met online more than seven years ago; we were all infertile, we all lived in the Philadelphia area, and we all were beaten and exhausted and overwhelmed by the reality of the infertility struggle.We formed a thread/group on the message board of an infertility site, and while many folks drifted in and out of our group over the years, there are a hardcore group of eight of us that have stayed in touch. And as of a few years ago, we all have our children.I've written about this group before, and it is amazing how our families were built