Dorothy's first day of 4K! Also a hair rant and a work retrospective.

 Public school don;t start until Tuesday next week, but the privates got back in business yesterday, meaning Dorothy got to wear her Dorothy dress (Thank you, Target) and GO TO SCHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!  She was obviously really excited.

 Also do you lover her kitten heels or what?

 OMG.  I kind of want to eat her still, like in this picture when her hot sticky little hands still look doughy.  But those moments are getting fewer and further between because she is much more kid than baby these days.

 She's getting taller, and she barely even has a chubby tummy anymore.

 I took about 75 more of these pictures, if you can believe it, and I am sure you can.

 But these are my absolutely favorites.

 Okay now.  Enough about her.  Let's talk about me.  And my hair that I cannot do.  I wore curlers yesterday morning all the way downtown.  I literally took them out in the parking lot of the kosher bakery where I was stopping to grab a million donuts to take to my meeting and put them in a ziploc bag and went about my day.

Ben snapped this pic before I left for work.  And then posted in on FB.  He;s the best.

But!!  This is my hair by lunch time.  ALMOST STRAIGHT.

 And by the end of the day-- just a huge frizzed out ball.  But oh my gosh it was fun to wear real clothes.  No idea what's wrong with my face in that pic, BTW.

 Instead of rolling my hair up the normal way, I put the curler at the root and held it vertically and then wrapped the hair around it.  The google told me this would create wave and not big bottom-heavy show choir curls.  Today I am going to try it like usual and see what happens.  I wasted almost all of a 90-minute lunch break yesterday watching YouTube videos and trying to curl it with my back up office straightener AND IT DIDN'T WORK.  I blame my wrists.

I looked back through the years of this blog to Welcome Week, and wow, it used to be a way bigger headache/juggle.  Part of that is the timing of the academic year (Ben started earlier, and he had more online classes now), and part of that is the ease of having bigger kids.

When Harry was tiny, I brought him with me.  My first year of doing my actual job with my actual PhD got off to a rough start because I got the wrong textbooks and only discovered them the day before my meetings started (hahahahahaha),  but the actual week was good, I think because we had a regular babysitter, our normal sitter, and it was different to have her come over everyday, but still pretty routine.  In 2010, we must have had our sitter, too, because all I was nervous about was getting my ID picture taken (WTF?).  In 2011, I took an early maternity leave because I thought for sure I would have Cooper in August-- LOLz for days-- so no Welcome Week for me.  2012 gives me hives just to read about, and we were kind of flying bling because we didn't have a regular sitter by hat point. We had grad students we sued a lot for nights out, but no day time helpers or anything.  In 2013, my parents had to come for a week and babysit Dorothy IN MY BUILDING so I could feed her periodically and ALSO we had to have a sitter at home. 2014 didn't muster a blog mention.  2015 had a babysitter FAIL that caused me to take all the kids to work (gaaaaaaaah).  Last year was busy but generally unremarkable.

Next year-- we might not even need a sitter at all because Harry will, be 12 and Jack 10 and "babies" 5 and almost 7.  This week we only need a sitter for a few hours 2 afternoons, and it is crazy to think about, but Harry could handle those few hours next year.  SO WEIRD.