A little bit of catch up on life at 45

Getting some thoughs in real quick before the baby wakes up.  I can see on the monitor that she's already starting to stir. We have a bed in the solarium, and it's snow and ice right now, so the room is very cold. The baby monitor has a tempurature gadge and it's 55 degrees. We sleep under a down comforter that is really warm. So it feels like camping in the cold, and cuddling under a sleeping bag.  

Anyway, my days are caring for the baby. She's 4 months old now and so I'm with her all the time, nursing her, and she doesn't sleep great during the day, so I don't get much time with my hands free.  At least it is a blessing that we own our own business and so I can dictate my day and level of involvement. I can pass things on to people, and we have a great team at the shop who can handle everything. I do really love making chocolate though, and I miss being more involved.  But it's also wonderful to cuddle a baby all day, so I shouldn't complain about it.

The toughest thing has been going on with Nala. She's a junior and is getting bullied in school. She was actually physicallly attacked twice, once at school and girl tried to shave her head.  I find myself being worried about her all the time. Worried about Kaio too, since he's been staying up all night driving around. Just today he told me that he was going to a meet in Maryland, but I can see from the toll reciepts that he actually went to New York. I'm so confused about why he would lie to me. I know I lied to my parents when I was a teen, and I was never up to any good. But he's 19 now, and he shouldn't have to tell me exactly where he is all the time anyway. When I was 19 I had already crossed the country by my self twice.

I meditate when I can, and try to calm myself, tell myself to trust the process. That being a teen is confusing and I can't micro manage them, they need to own their decisions. But I also need to create barriers that make it hard for them to fuck up too much. A lot of my worrying comes from my own bad choices. I've been reading about zen budism and this kind of suffering is seeds that we've planted flowering. So it makes sense to me that I'm superimposing my own ideas about what kind of trouble there is out there, on to them. They might be doing the most benign thing, and I could be imagining that they're doing drugs and having sex. That's perception on my end and not their burden to carry.

So that's the biggest stress of my days. But there always has to be something to stress about. That's how life goes, solving one problem at a time.  Tori is 11 and no major problems at the moment. But middleschool was difficult for the other kids, they both switched schools during that time. We switched Tori's school last year, so maybe she had her difficult year early. She's extreemly academic and into math, so now she's going to one of the best schools in the country. I'm trying to keep Tori extreemly busy with after school activities. Idle hands are the devils playground, so they say. Tomorrow we're planning on volunteering handing food out to the homeless, I think Nala will come too.

Mariano has started going to the gym, which is awesome. We're both starting to get the bodies of our parents, hahaha. COVID made us sedintary and out of shape. So I'm glad that he's getting to be more active because he's happier and more productive during the day. 

When the baby's older, I hope I'll be able to go to the gym too.  But besides that, besides trying to learn to deal with my mom worries and be the best mom I can to the kids, besides that, life is pretty magical. 

I live in my dream house, with my dream job, and loving family.  I'm so in awe of my life and find time to look out at the lake and be grateful every day.