Preschool is under way, and the outlook is good

This week, I worked in Gus's preschool classroom for the first time. His school is a co-op, so parents take a volunteer shift helping with the class once or twice a month.

Knowing Gus and reflecting on his, er, mixed performance at summer school a few months ago, I was both excited and nervous to see how he was doing firsthand. When we arrive at school most mornings, Gus is bubbling over with enthusiasm (read: sometimes he's a little hyper). I hadn't heard any negative reports from Gus's teacher, but I was curious to see how he settled in once it was time to get down to business.

Class begins with a few minutes of free play, and then the kids clean up and head to circle time. During circle time, the children learn the theme for the day. I was particularly concerned about the amount of quiet sitting and listening required of this portion of the day. Big G can have a hard time sitting still, and my presence would add a different element. I was pleasantly surprised to see that he did fine. Sure, he got a little antsy, but so did many. In short, he was nothing out of the ordinary.

The rest of the morning proceeded uneventfully. I was in charge of the toys and games area, so Gus started with me. We played Candy Land with another boy; he headed to the dramatic play area, where the kids can engage in imaginative play and use the little slide and seesaw; he painted a picture of a furry friend for art time.

At the end of the day, when we gathered for song time before snacks, I was seated across the circle from Gus, and I was struck all of a sudden by how grown-up he looked sitting there with his little legs crossed. I think because Gus is my youngest, sometimes I tend to think of him as younger than he actually is. For heaven's sake, he's 4, and I still carry him into school sometimes. That never would have happened, say, when Paul was in preschool and I was towing along a little Gus.

Don't get me wrong, Gus is still very much Gus. He has not magically transformed into an uber-polite and demure little man. (After all, this morning he was busted painting the bathroom  walls with toothpaste - for the second time.) Overall, though, I think he's learning and growing. On Friday, the teacher stopped me on my way out the door. She said Gus is really settling down and getting into the routine. My hope with preschool was that its structured setting would be good for him, would help prepare him for full-time school. It's looking like this experience is time well spent for him.

Home sale choice won't be easy

It all started about six weeks ago when our good friends told us the people across the street from them were looking to put their house on the market and were wondering if our friends knew anyone who would be interested. Mark and I have long had our sights on this neighborhood, loving its mature trees, established feel and proximity to the boys' school. We were cautiously excited, because honestly a house that is 30 to 40 years old could be anything from great to completely dated-looking.

The couple who was selling the home wasn't quite ready to show it yet, but knowing that we'd have a lot of work ahead of us before we could even think about putting our house on the market, we contacted a Realtor in hopes of getting a feel for what we could expect. She came to our house and was unsurprisingly effusive about our house and prospects of selling it. After all, isn't that their job? We've been in this house for eight years, and obviously the economy and housing market have both tanked since we bought this place. Fortunately, we were lucky to have purchased our home for a pretty reasonable price and would stand to make out OK if we were able to sell our house somewhere in the neighborhood of our asking price. I guess that's the best many sellers can hope for these days.

I've had house wanderlust from time to time for a couple years now. Oh, wouldn't it be nice if we could have more space, a bigger yard, live in that neighborhood? For the most part, though, we've been pretty content in this house and neighborhood. Though, we're not super-tight with most of our neighbors, we know everyone around us. The boys have friends across the street and down the road. It all lends a certain degree of comfort. Naturally, as soon as it looked as though we might move on from our abode, I started to feel very attached to it. This place is about as unremarkable as they come, but it's ours, the home we walked into returning from the hospital with babies Paul and Gus, the only home Ben has ever really known. Paul and Ben have heard us talking about the possibility of moving over the last couple weeks, and Paul emphatically says, "We're not moving!" Even though he'd be at the same school, that change is always hard for kids.

All of my nostalgia doesn't even take into consideration the logistics and headaches of selling a home. The last time we did it, Mark and I were both working full-time, and Ben was in child care. In a lot of ways, that made it much easier. Now with Gus and me at home, those showings and open houses undoubtedly would get a lot more complicated. And let's just say our house in its current state is not viewing-ready. Getting it to that point would require us to move mountains of clutter.

Then there's the stress of worrying about whether the house will sell, the agony of falling in love with another place only to have it snatched out from beneath you. The first day the Realtor walked through our house, she was very nice but said things like, "Now Jess, I know what it's like to have kids in the house, but if I were you I'd bleach the heck out of this tub." (I wash my tub every week, and darn if I can ever get it looking perfectly white!) I imagined what it would feel like to have all kinds of people walking through our home and sniping about what they dislike in this place we've created. All of this combined to make whole idea begin to look mighty unappealing. Plus, all of this was based on a house we had yet to set foot inside.

Finally, though, after weeks of waiting, the couple was ready to have us see the house. Mark and I had gone through a different house in the neighborhood two days before. The inside of it was staggeringly awful - wallpaper covering every wall, the decor unbelievably dated. It was like stepping into a time warp. Suddenly, I was very pessimistic about the place we were about to see. As we walked into the house, though, our fears evaporated. The house is lovely, immaculately maintained, with lots of renovations. The lot is full of trees and has a beautiful, shady backyard. It's not perfect, and it's not a whole lot bigger than what we have now, but it's the neighborhood we've always wanted. The kids could walk to school, our friends would would live across the street. In our house now, a busy street separates the boys from many of their friends. In this neighborhood, they could safely ride their bikes to many friends' houses.

Mark and I were really excited. I began to picture us making the house exactly what we wanted it to be. But me being me, I began to have worries and doubts. I was again feeling sad about the thought of leaving this house. On the other hand, though, I would be sad to see someone else get the other house as well. There's just no way this will be an easy decision.

As we wade through trying to make a choice, I'm trying to keep it all in perspective. After all, it's not so much about the house; it's more about us as a family: me and Mark and the boys. It makes me think of this song I love, "Home," by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. "Ahh, home. Let me come home. Home is wherever I'm with you." So it is.

Forgotten video footage unearths memories and stirs emotions

In anticipation of Ben turning 10 next month (sniff, sniff), Mark and I have set out to create a video or slideshow chronicling the years of his life. A few years ago, we decided to trade up to a small, handheld video camera, so we sold our older, larger one on eBay. Discovering much footage with which we'd done nothing, Mark hastily downloaded it onto the computer, and there it sat, again untouched.

Last weekend, I delved into our videos to see what discoveries awaited me. I was familiar with some of what I found, for I did do a little viewing when Mark downloaded all the video. One of my favorites is Ben, age 3, the Christmas after Paul was born. He opens a gift, and it's an outfit for his Build-a-Bear monkey, Clarence. (How Ben conjured the name Clarence at the age of 3, I still have no idea.) Ben says in this adorable little voice, "It's cwothes! For Cwarence!" Ben and I watched it together when I stumbled upon it again, and we shared lots of giggles.

Much of what I found, though, was new to me. Lots of it rekindled memories long forgotten, like the one of Ben and his cousin Nora, both probably a few months shy of 2, playing ring around the rosie in our kitchen. Once inseparable at family gatherings, now that Ben and Nora are both nearing 10, they're sadly not as tight as they used to be. It made me wish for the good, old days a little bit.

What astounded me most in my walk down memory lane was how much I'd forgotten entirely. I watched video from a birthday party of Paul's. My aunt from Chicago was there, and I'd completely forgotten the visit. For the life of me, I cannot remember a thing from that day.

I viewed the forgotten footage with a mix of happiness and sorrow. I was delighted to be able to relive these moments, and I treasured being able to see the boys again as they were when they were tiny. But the experience also got me reflecting on how easy it is to forget days, weeks, months of time. Sometimes I let days go by between updating my daily journal - I try to keep a short record of the happenings of each day. When I try to go back and recall what we did, say, six days ago, it's a real struggle. Imagine all the little memories that get lost over the years.

OK, so this is getting a little depressing, but all of this made me want to redouble my efforts to preserve memories. Like many parents, our initial enthusiasm for getting out the video camera has waned. I want to make sure that we record more, especially the little mundane moments, like the one I found of Paul and Ben singing "On Top of Spaghetti" on an ordinary winter day. Much as I'd like to sometimes, there's no stopping time and no going back, but I'll take heart in the fact that at least we have ways to hold on to a little piece of those moments.