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Nov. 1st, 2006 01:53 pmIt's November already - already! This year is almost over. How does this time warp keep happening to me?
Ananda and Aaron's costumes turned out really well, I think - I sewed their Hogwarts robes and crocheted their Gryffindor scarves, and we found good sticks for wands. We did buy some HP glasses, though. Isaac and Jake's costumes were store bought because I found them for $12 each months ago at BJ's, in the off season. So all in all I think four kids got to look great for under $50 (including materials), and that makes me pretty happy when I see single costumes going for that much or more.
( +4 of the kids yesterday )
I feel like I have deadlines pressing down on me all the time, lately. It's always having to have the house clean for a baby shower or the babysitter or before somebody comes over, and needing to have costumes done by Halloween, and needing to have a paper written by Wednesday (we actually have a 2-3 page paper due every week), etc. I've had things I need to mail that are long overdue and I get (very polite, super understanding) emails about them that make me completely insane, or these web updates are necessary for PATH and I only have one more day, or we're trying to get out the door on time to something...it's ridiculous. Whether it's dinner as the evening presses on with Jake making cooking impossible (he's always onthetableinthetrashonthetableonmydeskinthetrash now) or my Nana calling me because I STILL haven't emailed her Christmas lists for the kids, my life sometimes starts to seem like some kind of pressure cooker. I don't procrastinate nearly as badly as I used to, but now it's like there's no POINT trying to do clutter pick up and mopping before something unless it's RIGHT before, because otherwise it's just going to get messed up again beforehand anyway, and I find myself feeling good if I get PATH stuff done Monday (we meet Tuesdays), paper written Tuesday (class is Wednesday), etc. Every Saturday night we realize it's Saturday night and that we need to make a plan for church after the kids are already in bed and I'm cleaning and we have a movie lined up, and then someone has a bad night, keeps us up intermittently until morning, and we don't get up until far too late.
But then I feel like a baby, because I have an hour and a half to devote to updating my LJ. Well, Jake is eating like a maniac, I've gotten him strawberries, half a banana, more strawberries, a pretzel stick, a couple of the multigrain chips I was using with avocado stuff, a handful of Clifford Crunch (organic cereal), some water and nursed him, since I started this. He's thinning out, too, I don't know how toddlers do this. But that is easy stuff, back and forth, and Isaac's been watching Lilo and Stitch while Ananda and Aaron play marbles in my room the whole time.
Ananda is all about marbles all of a sudden. She quickly built up a huge collection using her money, and they play constantly. Patrice and Nadia (Mindy's twin 8 year olds, their cousins) came over the other day and she taught them.
We haven't had much structured school this week, but I've still been hugely satisfied with and excited about "their education". We spent 30 minutes reading poetry the other evening - Robert Frost, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Pablo Neruda. The first two I would read a stanza, we'd talk about it and explain everything, read a stanza, talk about it and explain everything - then when we got to the end of something, go back and read the whole thing all the way through. With Pablo Neruda, they're A. WAAAAY too advanced in metaphorical language and vocabulary for me to expect them to "Get" or even interpret, and B. in spanish, so we would just go a stanza at a time in spanish, and then in english. Aaron especially always amazes me with how much he loves listening to poetry. Ananda does a better job understanding but he just loves to listen to it flow.
Another evening we got out What Your First Grader Needs to Know and continued on with the history section - Mesopotamia, cuneiform being the first written language, Hammurabi's code being the first laws, and why we need laws and what our laws are and how our government enforces things, etc etc etc...these conversations branch off in so many different directions, and this one was helped along when the next part of the book was about the shift to monotheism, starting with Judaism. They didn't know that a couple of people we know are Jewish (like Shari from the birth center) and that they use the same Old Testament from our Bibles as "their book", or that a particular place we pass in town is a synangogue.
The night before Halloween I was sitting at my sewing machine and explaining (again, but for the first time in a while) about bobbins, presser feet, thread tension, what the pedal does, and why we need to hem - what a hem is, how it would look without one, and seeing all the hems and seems in our own clothes.
I think they're understanding Halloween about like I do; as a somewhat generic, "American Holiday" hodge podge of the Catholic Feast of all Saints, Mexican Dio de Los Muertos, and Pagan Samhain/All Hollow's Eve, wrapped up in a thick layer of "autumn stuff" (pumpkins, scarecrows, hay rides, cool weather and the harvest moon, to name a few). It's the only holiday we really acknowledge or celebrate basically because it's a fun tradition and "everyone else is doing it" - the others we have meanings and stories for, and personal reasons for keeping on with.
I felt the baby move last night, for the first time. And second and third and fourth and so on. Not kicks, yet, but lots of rolling and stretching feelings. I was laying on the couch with Grant watching Ransom on HBO at about 2 am. Pregnancy feels so very temporary this time, like...well...something I've seen come and go several other times. I was looking into the back of the dark van on the way back from my sister's place last night, at all of them mostly sleeping. Thinking, next year Jake will be where Isaac is at. Isaac will be nearly FOUR (he turns 3 in 3 months). The new baby will be 6 months old, maybe in some kind of costume. It's unreal. I will be largely unchanged, but they will each be completely different creatures. And there will come a time - maybe very soon, because of concerns about my deliveries - when there are no more babies, and it's only the kids we have, getting bigger and older all the time.
My sister's baby has dropped enough that her fundal height went from 40 to 38 in the past week. And turned anterior for her, finally, so that she's not in so much back pain. Any day now...
Ananda and Aaron's costumes turned out really well, I think - I sewed their Hogwarts robes and crocheted their Gryffindor scarves, and we found good sticks for wands. We did buy some HP glasses, though. Isaac and Jake's costumes were store bought because I found them for $12 each months ago at BJ's, in the off season. So all in all I think four kids got to look great for under $50 (including materials), and that makes me pretty happy when I see single costumes going for that much or more.
( +4 of the kids yesterday )
I feel like I have deadlines pressing down on me all the time, lately. It's always having to have the house clean for a baby shower or the babysitter or before somebody comes over, and needing to have costumes done by Halloween, and needing to have a paper written by Wednesday (we actually have a 2-3 page paper due every week), etc. I've had things I need to mail that are long overdue and I get (very polite, super understanding) emails about them that make me completely insane, or these web updates are necessary for PATH and I only have one more day, or we're trying to get out the door on time to something...it's ridiculous. Whether it's dinner as the evening presses on with Jake making cooking impossible (he's always onthetableinthetrashonthetableonmydeskinthetrash now) or my Nana calling me because I STILL haven't emailed her Christmas lists for the kids, my life sometimes starts to seem like some kind of pressure cooker. I don't procrastinate nearly as badly as I used to, but now it's like there's no POINT trying to do clutter pick up and mopping before something unless it's RIGHT before, because otherwise it's just going to get messed up again beforehand anyway, and I find myself feeling good if I get PATH stuff done Monday (we meet Tuesdays), paper written Tuesday (class is Wednesday), etc. Every Saturday night we realize it's Saturday night and that we need to make a plan for church after the kids are already in bed and I'm cleaning and we have a movie lined up, and then someone has a bad night, keeps us up intermittently until morning, and we don't get up until far too late.
But then I feel like a baby, because I have an hour and a half to devote to updating my LJ. Well, Jake is eating like a maniac, I've gotten him strawberries, half a banana, more strawberries, a pretzel stick, a couple of the multigrain chips I was using with avocado stuff, a handful of Clifford Crunch (organic cereal), some water and nursed him, since I started this. He's thinning out, too, I don't know how toddlers do this. But that is easy stuff, back and forth, and Isaac's been watching Lilo and Stitch while Ananda and Aaron play marbles in my room the whole time.
Ananda is all about marbles all of a sudden. She quickly built up a huge collection using her money, and they play constantly. Patrice and Nadia (Mindy's twin 8 year olds, their cousins) came over the other day and she taught them.
We haven't had much structured school this week, but I've still been hugely satisfied with and excited about "their education". We spent 30 minutes reading poetry the other evening - Robert Frost, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Pablo Neruda. The first two I would read a stanza, we'd talk about it and explain everything, read a stanza, talk about it and explain everything - then when we got to the end of something, go back and read the whole thing all the way through. With Pablo Neruda, they're A. WAAAAY too advanced in metaphorical language and vocabulary for me to expect them to "Get" or even interpret, and B. in spanish, so we would just go a stanza at a time in spanish, and then in english. Aaron especially always amazes me with how much he loves listening to poetry. Ananda does a better job understanding but he just loves to listen to it flow.
Another evening we got out What Your First Grader Needs to Know and continued on with the history section - Mesopotamia, cuneiform being the first written language, Hammurabi's code being the first laws, and why we need laws and what our laws are and how our government enforces things, etc etc etc...these conversations branch off in so many different directions, and this one was helped along when the next part of the book was about the shift to monotheism, starting with Judaism. They didn't know that a couple of people we know are Jewish (like Shari from the birth center) and that they use the same Old Testament from our Bibles as "their book", or that a particular place we pass in town is a synangogue.
The night before Halloween I was sitting at my sewing machine and explaining (again, but for the first time in a while) about bobbins, presser feet, thread tension, what the pedal does, and why we need to hem - what a hem is, how it would look without one, and seeing all the hems and seems in our own clothes.
I think they're understanding Halloween about like I do; as a somewhat generic, "American Holiday" hodge podge of the Catholic Feast of all Saints, Mexican Dio de Los Muertos, and Pagan Samhain/All Hollow's Eve, wrapped up in a thick layer of "autumn stuff" (pumpkins, scarecrows, hay rides, cool weather and the harvest moon, to name a few). It's the only holiday we really acknowledge or celebrate basically because it's a fun tradition and "everyone else is doing it" - the others we have meanings and stories for, and personal reasons for keeping on with.
I felt the baby move last night, for the first time. And second and third and fourth and so on. Not kicks, yet, but lots of rolling and stretching feelings. I was laying on the couch with Grant watching Ransom on HBO at about 2 am. Pregnancy feels so very temporary this time, like...well...something I've seen come and go several other times. I was looking into the back of the dark van on the way back from my sister's place last night, at all of them mostly sleeping. Thinking, next year Jake will be where Isaac is at. Isaac will be nearly FOUR (he turns 3 in 3 months). The new baby will be 6 months old, maybe in some kind of costume. It's unreal. I will be largely unchanged, but they will each be completely different creatures. And there will come a time - maybe very soon, because of concerns about my deliveries - when there are no more babies, and it's only the kids we have, getting bigger and older all the time.
My sister's baby has dropped enough that her fundal height went from 40 to 38 in the past week. And turned anterior for her, finally, so that she's not in so much back pain. Any day now...
