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altarflameI've been so busy...throughout the morning I attempted to post, and just ended up with unfinished rambling that I liked getting out, but am not sure anyone much cares about;
Feeding my children is two distinct, separate and full time jobs. Grant needs to work one just to pay for all the groceries, and then if I work at it all day long and into the night they can all actually receive the food in an edible format. I got up this morning and got Jake handfulls of cereal and grapes continuously (with him banging for more and yelling and signing food each time I stopped), and all the others bowls of cereal, and started some pineapple chilling, all to hold people over so I could make a frittatta without them dying of wait. Now that Jake and Isaac reliably eat parts of said (8 egg, veggies, cheese and bread crumb)frittatta, I have to have the pineapple ready to go with it to make it stretch. When I try to make myself a chicken sandwhich, I have to get out 6 tenderloins rather than the 3 I need, so that each of the boys can have one, too, and plan for some sort of yogurt or salad or something for Ananda to be ready so that I can actually sit down and eat my freakin' sandwhich. A frequent scenario if we go out for dinner ingredients includes getting a crate of strawberries that is just for Isaac and Jake to wolf down completely while I cook the dinner (which they still eat just fine).
Just to recap, for BREAKFAST today the kids and I consumed;
-half a box of cheerios
-a quart's worth of milk
-quarter of a bag of grapes
-8 eggs
-half a crate of mushrooms
-1 roma tomato
-quarter block of cheddar
-half a cup of bread crumbs
-large can of pineapple rings
-miniscule amounts of olive oil and seasonings
Yes, this is a regular sort of day.
I actually found myself worrying yesterday that Aaron is not eating enough. He's getting thinner and thinner. He has some skinny minny genes, it's true, and he's growing, but...it's still weird for me to see, and he is my pickiest eater. Like last night he ate the half a piece of peanut butter bread that I sat down next to his spaghetti, but none of the spaghetti itself, at dinnertime :/ That sort of thing is all too common with him, and he and Ananda don't do the constant snacking that the toddlers do. As long as I'm cooking a real breakfast he gets at least one big, healthy meal a day, because he likes pretty much all the breakfast foods I make a lot, and then he'll reliably have a pbj and fruit or something at lunchtime. But dinner is really hit or miss with him. I can just have a little without meat for Annie and she's good to go but I'm not going to remove all the vegetables from his portion of stir fry or make him something completely different if we're having a soup he thinks it weird, or something.
Another thing - we're already missing having room for a passenger, just thinking ahead to the new baby. It's pretty common for us to bring Shaun along to a restaurant or store, and we cart my brother around a lot when he stays here or we're in Jacksonville. That will no longer be possible with another carseat. Laura used to come with the kids and I to a lot of places as well, while Grant was working, and for now that is still possible with her baby - but we'll only have the one seat when G's gone now, and she's gonna have Brian. Plus I keep thinking that as the kids get older, they're going to have more friends in a "Can so and so come" way. Not to mention cargo space on roadtrips is getting sparse. It's actually starting to seem like an ideal, practical solution (if it were actually financially feasible) to have a "big van" that seats 10 or 12 or something, and have the minivan be the "small car" for when it's just us and we're staying in town O_o I'm actually starting to see this as a goal worth striving for.
I'm really psyched about us all getting back into school, on a couple of counts...
-We got Ananda some books of recorder music (previously she just had the "learn to play" book with a few dozen or so short, simple songs in it). She has been on and on about wanting a flute for months now and I feel like flute is probably way too hard, and like bass clarinet is a better transfer from recorder even though she thinks they're "ugly", etc etc - but I talked to a guy at the music store yesterday who got a flute out and showed me it's really NOT that hard, and that bass clarinet doesn't really transfer note-wise anyway. Flutes ARE over a hundred dollars for even a cheap one, though (ranging up to a couple of grand for something really fancy :x). So I made a deal with her that if she really keeps up practicing and learning recorder a few times a week with me until her birthday (in June), we'll try to get her a flute then, but it's going to be ALL she gets. She actually jumped up and down at the prospect, with excitement.
-Isaac has been asking to do school too anytime he wakes up from his nap while they're still working - basically since he learned to talk. He wants a workbook so badly, yada yada. I realized we have a single still-new Handwriting Without Tears workbook that's mostly detailed coloring excercises to prepare fine motor skills for writing letters, as well as one unused Pre-K kind of ABCs and 123s activity book. So I've told him we'll start using those and he actually gasps in amazement and says "It's going to be SO FUN!!!" I'm eager to see how he does. We all know he's some sort of evil genius, who's learned to count to 20 just from playing hide and seek with the other kids and can sing his alphabet based completely on Sesame Street - he's really not NEARLY as "Worked with" as Ananda and Aaron were at his age. But he still knows every color and shape and animal, with a third the time being read to. The recorder books Ananda got came with a new recorder she doesn't need, and we told Isaac it could be his (Aaron has one already), and he's thrilled about that, too (though I don't actually see him playing anything at all for quite awhile).
Aaaanyway...I am really satisfied with college right now. I got all As on every paper and test in philosophy, throughout the semester, but then during the last week of class I had procrastinated a bit, and it bit me in the ass when the kids got headlice, we were preparing for the holidays and Jake got sick all at once. I never turned in my last two papers and kind of bombed the last test (though I never saw the actual grade). I was afraid I'd end up with a C or even a D, but I went online today and saw that I got a B, and was happy enough. I should have known it would average out well - we had to write a new paper every week in there, and had I think 5 tests total as well. I think I even had "Extra credit" sort of points from a couple of times that he graded on a curve and I had a 100 to start with.
I went down to the college today, to change my Spring schedule. I was going to do morning classes 3 times a week up at the Kendall campus, but Grant hired an employee who works mornings AND got a job himself working two days a week for Verifone, so there's just no way. This initially dissapointed me greatly, but I think it'll work out really well. I'm doing Human Sexuality through independant study, the professor seems very straightforward and I already have my syllabus; and Abnormal Psych - which I'm really, really interested in - through the Virtual College Miami Dade has. Which in itself is a pleasant surprise; the class grading is going to involve participating on messageboards and in chat sessions, which I didn't expect. Both of these classes intrigue me enough that I want to read the textbooks and write the papers and all. Also, I have the flexibility this way to make SURE I'm done before the new baby arrives (and isn't it funny that we put it that way - as if the baby weren't right here in my lap, this minute...can't really get much more physically present than it currently is). My due date and the end of Spring term were slightly overlapping, enough to make me nervous about finals and all, so this works out more practically than a structured class schedule.
We have two parties lined up in the next week; my old high school friend Alice is throwing her annual New Years Eve bash, and though it is not geared towards kids, she and her family don't mind them, either. They live on a huge piece of rural land and there will be a bonfire and fireworks outside (display style, not fools playing with little things), and a ton and a half of healthy food options inside, as well as many people who either attended high school with me, or taught us (her parties have age ranges that are insane, it's a mix or her and her parents' people - there tend to be lots of political and philosophical discussions and nothing too loud). Then on the 6th my friend Kristin, the La Leche League leader, is throwing herself a 30th birthday party that kids are expressly invited to spend watching movies, playing together in the play room or dancing through (she has two of her own and everyone she knows is an attachment parent of some sort). I think I'm going to make her a fairy as a gift, because that's right up her alley, though I'm still deciding on some kind of cool drink and snack things (it's "Bring Your Own Beer And Bon Bons").
And LAST (since it IS 2:30 in the morning and Grant has been unconscious on the couch for an hour now) our budget just keeps looking better. The employee Grant hired is REALLY working out well, and his time is both getting extra things done G couldn't do on his own, AND providing a new structure of accountability for Grant to do the things he can. Plus the Verifone job I mentioned - it's an 8 hour day with 30 minute commute, 2 days a week, and will bring in an extra $1400 a month for us. I know you aren't supposed to talk figures when you discuss money because people think it's tacky, but I really don't care - in the next two weeks, we've got $2500 coming in (and that's from the business, which means $5000 is coming in because only half comes to us and the other half pays business expenses). We aren't rich or anything, I mean...we have enough bills to eat up that $2500. And last month was great, but we had Christmas and travelling to fund, and an extra van payment we were behind, so it was like "great Thank God because great is barely enough"...I'm just saying, we caught up and funded Christmas and did the travelling. And this month we'll actually pay all the bills. He just picked up another account last week, and the Verifone checks will start coming in - which will be all for us, not associated with the business. It's nice to see things coming together. We can actually scrape out the money to go to the Bodies exhibit that's in Miami now, before it's gone, and are talking seriously about putting Ananda back in dance after tax return time - and letting Isaac start, too, since he's pretty much always wanted to. That will all be contingent on finding them classes one after the other, though - Pinecrest is a 35 minute drive and I can't do it round trip twice a week.
I'm actually getting nervous, as I count up all this good stuff right now. The house is clean-ish again, finally, since I FINALLY got enough of the gifts donated, sorted, assembled, assimilated and organized to the point that I could clear floors completely and sweep and mop all of the tile and scrub the counters and my desk - it's not just piles of junk on increasingly yucky surfaces, now. And since I had to clean out some closets, shelves and cabinets to make that all work, those areas are cleaner than they've been in months or even years, as well.
Ok...I can stop typing...really I can...here I go shutting up...
Feeding my children is two distinct, separate and full time jobs. Grant needs to work one just to pay for all the groceries, and then if I work at it all day long and into the night they can all actually receive the food in an edible format. I got up this morning and got Jake handfulls of cereal and grapes continuously (with him banging for more and yelling and signing food each time I stopped), and all the others bowls of cereal, and started some pineapple chilling, all to hold people over so I could make a frittatta without them dying of wait. Now that Jake and Isaac reliably eat parts of said (8 egg, veggies, cheese and bread crumb)frittatta, I have to have the pineapple ready to go with it to make it stretch. When I try to make myself a chicken sandwhich, I have to get out 6 tenderloins rather than the 3 I need, so that each of the boys can have one, too, and plan for some sort of yogurt or salad or something for Ananda to be ready so that I can actually sit down and eat my freakin' sandwhich. A frequent scenario if we go out for dinner ingredients includes getting a crate of strawberries that is just for Isaac and Jake to wolf down completely while I cook the dinner (which they still eat just fine).
Just to recap, for BREAKFAST today the kids and I consumed;
-half a box of cheerios
-a quart's worth of milk
-quarter of a bag of grapes
-8 eggs
-half a crate of mushrooms
-1 roma tomato
-quarter block of cheddar
-half a cup of bread crumbs
-large can of pineapple rings
-miniscule amounts of olive oil and seasonings
Yes, this is a regular sort of day.
I actually found myself worrying yesterday that Aaron is not eating enough. He's getting thinner and thinner. He has some skinny minny genes, it's true, and he's growing, but...it's still weird for me to see, and he is my pickiest eater. Like last night he ate the half a piece of peanut butter bread that I sat down next to his spaghetti, but none of the spaghetti itself, at dinnertime :/ That sort of thing is all too common with him, and he and Ananda don't do the constant snacking that the toddlers do. As long as I'm cooking a real breakfast he gets at least one big, healthy meal a day, because he likes pretty much all the breakfast foods I make a lot, and then he'll reliably have a pbj and fruit or something at lunchtime. But dinner is really hit or miss with him. I can just have a little without meat for Annie and she's good to go but I'm not going to remove all the vegetables from his portion of stir fry or make him something completely different if we're having a soup he thinks it weird, or something.
Another thing - we're already missing having room for a passenger, just thinking ahead to the new baby. It's pretty common for us to bring Shaun along to a restaurant or store, and we cart my brother around a lot when he stays here or we're in Jacksonville. That will no longer be possible with another carseat. Laura used to come with the kids and I to a lot of places as well, while Grant was working, and for now that is still possible with her baby - but we'll only have the one seat when G's gone now, and she's gonna have Brian. Plus I keep thinking that as the kids get older, they're going to have more friends in a "Can so and so come" way. Not to mention cargo space on roadtrips is getting sparse. It's actually starting to seem like an ideal, practical solution (if it were actually financially feasible) to have a "big van" that seats 10 or 12 or something, and have the minivan be the "small car" for when it's just us and we're staying in town O_o I'm actually starting to see this as a goal worth striving for.
I'm really psyched about us all getting back into school, on a couple of counts...
-We got Ananda some books of recorder music (previously she just had the "learn to play" book with a few dozen or so short, simple songs in it). She has been on and on about wanting a flute for months now and I feel like flute is probably way too hard, and like bass clarinet is a better transfer from recorder even though she thinks they're "ugly", etc etc - but I talked to a guy at the music store yesterday who got a flute out and showed me it's really NOT that hard, and that bass clarinet doesn't really transfer note-wise anyway. Flutes ARE over a hundred dollars for even a cheap one, though (ranging up to a couple of grand for something really fancy :x). So I made a deal with her that if she really keeps up practicing and learning recorder a few times a week with me until her birthday (in June), we'll try to get her a flute then, but it's going to be ALL she gets. She actually jumped up and down at the prospect, with excitement.
-Isaac has been asking to do school too anytime he wakes up from his nap while they're still working - basically since he learned to talk. He wants a workbook so badly, yada yada. I realized we have a single still-new Handwriting Without Tears workbook that's mostly detailed coloring excercises to prepare fine motor skills for writing letters, as well as one unused Pre-K kind of ABCs and 123s activity book. So I've told him we'll start using those and he actually gasps in amazement and says "It's going to be SO FUN!!!" I'm eager to see how he does. We all know he's some sort of evil genius, who's learned to count to 20 just from playing hide and seek with the other kids and can sing his alphabet based completely on Sesame Street - he's really not NEARLY as "Worked with" as Ananda and Aaron were at his age. But he still knows every color and shape and animal, with a third the time being read to. The recorder books Ananda got came with a new recorder she doesn't need, and we told Isaac it could be his (Aaron has one already), and he's thrilled about that, too (though I don't actually see him playing anything at all for quite awhile).
Aaaanyway...I am really satisfied with college right now. I got all As on every paper and test in philosophy, throughout the semester, but then during the last week of class I had procrastinated a bit, and it bit me in the ass when the kids got headlice, we were preparing for the holidays and Jake got sick all at once. I never turned in my last two papers and kind of bombed the last test (though I never saw the actual grade). I was afraid I'd end up with a C or even a D, but I went online today and saw that I got a B, and was happy enough. I should have known it would average out well - we had to write a new paper every week in there, and had I think 5 tests total as well. I think I even had "Extra credit" sort of points from a couple of times that he graded on a curve and I had a 100 to start with.
I went down to the college today, to change my Spring schedule. I was going to do morning classes 3 times a week up at the Kendall campus, but Grant hired an employee who works mornings AND got a job himself working two days a week for Verifone, so there's just no way. This initially dissapointed me greatly, but I think it'll work out really well. I'm doing Human Sexuality through independant study, the professor seems very straightforward and I already have my syllabus; and Abnormal Psych - which I'm really, really interested in - through the Virtual College Miami Dade has. Which in itself is a pleasant surprise; the class grading is going to involve participating on messageboards and in chat sessions, which I didn't expect. Both of these classes intrigue me enough that I want to read the textbooks and write the papers and all. Also, I have the flexibility this way to make SURE I'm done before the new baby arrives (and isn't it funny that we put it that way - as if the baby weren't right here in my lap, this minute...can't really get much more physically present than it currently is). My due date and the end of Spring term were slightly overlapping, enough to make me nervous about finals and all, so this works out more practically than a structured class schedule.
We have two parties lined up in the next week; my old high school friend Alice is throwing her annual New Years Eve bash, and though it is not geared towards kids, she and her family don't mind them, either. They live on a huge piece of rural land and there will be a bonfire and fireworks outside (display style, not fools playing with little things), and a ton and a half of healthy food options inside, as well as many people who either attended high school with me, or taught us (her parties have age ranges that are insane, it's a mix or her and her parents' people - there tend to be lots of political and philosophical discussions and nothing too loud). Then on the 6th my friend Kristin, the La Leche League leader, is throwing herself a 30th birthday party that kids are expressly invited to spend watching movies, playing together in the play room or dancing through (she has two of her own and everyone she knows is an attachment parent of some sort). I think I'm going to make her a fairy as a gift, because that's right up her alley, though I'm still deciding on some kind of cool drink and snack things (it's "Bring Your Own Beer And Bon Bons").
And LAST (since it IS 2:30 in the morning and Grant has been unconscious on the couch for an hour now) our budget just keeps looking better. The employee Grant hired is REALLY working out well, and his time is both getting extra things done G couldn't do on his own, AND providing a new structure of accountability for Grant to do the things he can. Plus the Verifone job I mentioned - it's an 8 hour day with 30 minute commute, 2 days a week, and will bring in an extra $1400 a month for us. I know you aren't supposed to talk figures when you discuss money because people think it's tacky, but I really don't care - in the next two weeks, we've got $2500 coming in (and that's from the business, which means $5000 is coming in because only half comes to us and the other half pays business expenses). We aren't rich or anything, I mean...we have enough bills to eat up that $2500. And last month was great, but we had Christmas and travelling to fund, and an extra van payment we were behind, so it was like "great Thank God because great is barely enough"...I'm just saying, we caught up and funded Christmas and did the travelling. And this month we'll actually pay all the bills. He just picked up another account last week, and the Verifone checks will start coming in - which will be all for us, not associated with the business. It's nice to see things coming together. We can actually scrape out the money to go to the Bodies exhibit that's in Miami now, before it's gone, and are talking seriously about putting Ananda back in dance after tax return time - and letting Isaac start, too, since he's pretty much always wanted to. That will all be contingent on finding them classes one after the other, though - Pinecrest is a 35 minute drive and I can't do it round trip twice a week.
I'm actually getting nervous, as I count up all this good stuff right now. The house is clean-ish again, finally, since I FINALLY got enough of the gifts donated, sorted, assembled, assimilated and organized to the point that I could clear floors completely and sweep and mop all of the tile and scrub the counters and my desk - it's not just piles of junk on increasingly yucky surfaces, now. And since I had to clean out some closets, shelves and cabinets to make that all work, those areas are cleaner than they've been in months or even years, as well.
Ok...I can stop typing...really I can...here I go shutting up...
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-30 04:36 pm (UTC)* "Can so and so come" might not be a problem when some of the kids are old enough to stay home for a little bit by themselves. Maybe you're thinking more of "in just a few years" rather than "when A&A are teens?" in which case I suggest you buy a small bus. ;)
* I remember being in kindergarten and wanting to play the flute, and my best friend telling me "But we can't take flute lessons until we're in THIRD GRADE," and I thought, "But that will take SO LONG to get to!!!" eighteen years later... lol.
* Good for you with all the money coming in! Grant sure works his ass off, geez. I don't think it's tacky to talk about money in this sort of forum, where we're all pretty out there and open about our personal whatever. I've posted in communities about my yeast infections before; I think money is just FINE to talk about ;D
* YAY for cleaning! Doesn't it feel great?
no subject
Date: 2006-12-30 05:04 pm (UTC)