Oy,

Ok, so Thing One has a girlfriend.

I like her. She seems pretty quiet if you don't know her but is actually quite the sassy lil pistol.

She is just about a year older than he is and is doing Running Start (attending college). We've known her family for years (they were in our homeschool co-op) and they had a brief almost dating moment around 13 which mostly involved a lot of blushing, avoiding eye contact, and bursts of intense FB messaging. 

That flamed out pretty quickly it seemed but they stayed friends, and as it turns out, not entirely flamed out.

They are rather cute and it is pretty sweet but also a little disconcerting that my baby man is old enough for this, in as much as he is actually old enough for it.

In other news, he crashed his car, into the rear end of another car. Everyone appears to be ok but of course, we shall see what happens next. I am not at all blaming my husband who decided to spend $2,000 on an 8 cylinder Mustang in RED for our 16 year old child who already had 2 speeding tickets and had crashed one of our cars into the other of our cars in the driveway... oh no, I am not, because I am JUST SO FREAKING CALM AND REASONABLE (through tightly gritting teeth).

Anyway, in other news, I love cozi.
We have a family calendar there that I can print out if I want AND (best part) it also text message appoint reminders to the phones of the family members involved. So if Thing One has a Dr. appt— he gets a reminder, if I have a meeting— I get a text an hour ahead (although I can adjust the time if I want), if we all have to be somewhere according to the calendar— we all get a text, if I set it up that way. It does other cool stuff too, but the text reminders are the bomb for us.

This parenting gig is demanding! Good thing I am fond of them.

♫ I want you to want me ♪

My application to the Master's of Library and Information Science program at the University of Washington is complete and now I wait to hear if they have accepted me.
I really want them to want me!
They have til the end of March to let me know....which is an eternity!
So, now I wait.

Daring Greatly

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

That  is a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, from 1910, speaking at the Sorbonne. A book I read recently took its title from this quote and when I shared it with Thing One he asked me to print it out on some nice paper so he could put it in his wallet. 

How much do I love that?

Recently, he keeps running into the message that failure is part of the path to success. It's a good thing for all of us to remember. At least fail while daring greatly.