M-Max

Max is my first child.  I adore him.  He is amazing.  He's five now.  He is the neatest little kid.  I know I'm biased, but he is so great.  He is funny and smart and cute and just awesome.
Max loves trains.  He says that he only likes transportation things.  They just had a unit on transportation at his school and he was the transportation expert.  Now they are studying plants and he is not so interested, but he is learning some stuff.  He just only wants to play trains at home.
I had a miscarriage right before conceiving Max.  I was so worried that wouldn't be a viable pregnancy either but everything was okay.  It was a rough pregnancy, and the delivery wasn't great either, but I was so happy to have him.
I worry about him a lot because he seems to march to his own beat.  He gets along really well with adults but not so much with other kids.  He seems to be well-liked but he doesn't play with many people.
He is  starting kindergarten next year so will be one of the older kids in the class, but I'm thinking that is probably a good thing.  I don't want him to be bored intellectually but he definitely needs more time to develop socially.
I am really enjoying watching him grow up.  I like babies, but I think kids are so much more fun as they get older and start to be able to do more things.

Tomorrow I'll be writing about Nick.  :)

L-Letting Go

Letting go isn't easy for me.  I am a grudge-holder.  I'm working on it though.  I also seem to rehash past mistakes.  I wish I could stop doing that.
I do better with letting go of things on a daily basis.  I'm pretty patient with my kids.  I can deal with things that don't go right in the kitchen.
I am trying to let go of expectations of myself.  I think that if I just work on being in the moment I'll be able to get more done.  I don't mean I'm not going to set goals, but if I have to deviate from my schedule that doesn't mean I have to throw it all away.  I can let go of perfectionism and I'd be able to accomplish a lot more.
That is tough for me.  I don't know why.  I don't really see myself as a perfectionist but I guess I tend to have the idea that if I mess something up I might as well just give up on it.  That's not very helpful.  I think I'm doing a lot better with that in some regards, but not in others.
I am doing well with not just throwing away my workout program, even though I haven't been able to do it exactly the way I might want to.
I am trying to do better with perfectionism and cleaning my house but there seem to be other issues going on.  I'm not mad at myself about it though.

K-Kaufman

Kaufman is my middle name.  I was not given a middle name at first.  Then, after my mom adopted my sister, she decided she was going to change her last name back to Kaufman and she wanted to use Hevener as her middle name, and I added Kaufman as my middle name.

The Kaufman family is pretty amazing.  Out of all of my relatives, they are my favorites.  All of my mom's exes seemed to be more in love with her family than with her.   (By exes I mean ex-boyfriends as well as ex-husbands--she has two of those.)

Max (my older son) is a Kaufman through and through.  He looks like my grandfather and my uncle, and he has the body type too.  I have the Kaufman legs.

I don't know a huge amount about my grandparents and their parents.  My grandfather was a Lithuanian Jew, but I don't know any details about why his family moved here.  He and my grandmother both went to Penn.  My grandfather was a social worker and my grandmother was a teacher for at least some time, I think.  They were instrumental in making their neighborhood one of the first integrated neighborhoods in Philadelphia.  They were also Communists, but I don't think that was widely publicized.

My uncle took Biden's place as Delaware's Senator for two years.  He has three daughters and they are all a fair amount older than I am.  I don't see them as often as I'd like but it is always fun when we all get together.

My mom also has two sisters.  One of them has a son who attends college here where I am.  I used to babysit her two kids when I was at UVa.  I have a lot of fond memories of doing that.

I love my family and I am proud to be a Kaufman.

J-Jewelry

I make jewelry, but I don't wear much other than my wedding and engagement rings and earrings.  Oh, and I have some piercings but most of them have closed up.  I kind of miss the ones that are gone and I might get them redone but I'll wait until I'm done having kids.

I like jewelry and I have a lot of it.  I have some really nice earrings and some neat hand made things.  I made my wedding jewelry and that of my bridesmaids and some other people associated with the wedding.

I guess I got out of the habit of wearing much stuff once I had my son because he was a grabber.  I think Nick is a grabber too.

I mostly make bracelets but I make necklaces as well and I have findings for earrings.  I have a series of things that I'm making in honor of The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes.  It's a great book and I'm making things representative of characters and places.

I had trouble thinking of a J and I don't have much to say right now.

I-Introvert

I am an introvert.  So is my husband, and so is my 5 year old.  My 10 month old is an extrovert.  I can tell because he'll be all cranky and tired and then we'll be in a social setting and he just brightens up and is so friendly and good.

I don't mind being an introvert.  I'm glad that I know about them now, because when I was in high school I was just weird.  Also my mom is an extrovert so she didn't really understand about how I felt about things.  That is sort of weird because my dad is and introvert, and so is my sister's father.  So she seems to like us just fine.

I really do like being by myself, although it would be nice to have some friends around here.  But I don't want local friends enough to put myself out there and try to make them.  I know people here but it's really hard to meet up.  We are all busy with our lives.

I hope that Max does okay with being an introvert.  Maybe now it isn't as big an issue.  He is a nice little boy and I think people like him.  He is not the best in groups and I can tell that when he gets home from preschool he needs to spend time unwinding and just hang out by himself.

H-Happiness

I think that in general I'm pretty happy.  I wish I had more money, and a bigger house, and a nicer car.  But I love my kids and my husband and the rest of my family.  I like not having a 9-5 office job.  For the most part, I like myself.  There are plenty of things that I'd change about my life, but they're pretty superficial.
I do think that I'm dissatisfied with things, but not really unhappy.  I am able to find joy in life on a daily basis.  I may spend a lot of time worrying but I am happy every day that I have my sons and many of the other things in my life.
I'm not sure that I acknowledge my happiness enough.  It's easy to get wrapped up in my financial worries, and they definitely detract from my happiness.  And I do like stuff.  I know that things don't really make me happy, but I do like things.
I think happiness is kind of difficult to define.  Because for me it's sharing meals with my family, going to the zoo on a spring day, laughing at something my five year old has said, reading a good book, painting or crafting or writing something that I know is good.
I definitely think happiness is something that you can find in daily life if you look for it.  Some people have a mindset which prevents them from seeing things that might make them happy.  Of course, I know there are times when it's not easy and may be impossible to be happy.  I don't think it's a simple emotion.  But for me I know it's something that I've had to choose to feel, and I struggle with finding that daily joy sometimes.
There are people in my life who aren't happy and seem to look for the bad in everything.  I am prone to this behavior but I've been working on not being that way.  It draws me, though.  It's easier for me to frame everything in a negative way.  But I know that there are more good things in my life than bad, and I try to appreciate what I have and not think so much about what is lacking.

G-Goals

I have a lot of goals.  I think I need to make them more specific because I don't seem to be getting anywhere with them.  It's kind of discouraging.
I also wonder about that study where they said that if you envision your success your brain thinks you have already succeeded so it doesn't work as hard to help you reach your goals.  I think that would maybe apply to imagining your success, rather than thinking and visualizing the steps you take to reach your goals.
I feel like I'm so anxious about not succeeding that I've effectively paralyzed myself and don't get much of anything accomplished, and that creates a vicious circle in which I don't have faith that I will succeed, so I don't succeed, and then I have less faith.
I used to achieve all the goals I set for myself.  That hasn't happened for a long time.  I don't think my goals are unrealistic.  I'm just not quite sure how to get started.  I know I need to just dive right in.  That's not easy to do sometimes.
I know that beating up myself for my failures isn't the way to accomplish any more goals.  And I have gotten some stuff done.
I'm currently doing Camp NaNo, and I'll get my words written for that.  I'm behind at the moment but I am motivated to get that done.
I'm doing 750words.com and I succeeded in March's challenge, and I know I can do April too.
I've successfully given birth to two healthy babies.
These are recent things.  I have a long list of past achieved goals but they are from a long time ago.
I have a blog where I've been tracking my goals for this year but I think I missed out on my March update.  That's not to say I can't update now.  I don't think I have much to show for this year so far.  However, the year is only 1/4 of the way through and I can get a lot done in the next 9 months.