A day in the life..

Win the Essential Babywearing Stash from Along for the Ride (one Beco Butterfly, one Hotsling baby pouch, one BabyHawk Mei Tai, one Zolowear Ring Sling, and one Gypsy Mama Wrap)

So it's been 2 months since I've updated, I really need to be more "regular" about this. On the other end, I think I journal better with a pen and paper.

February was a terrific month. We got our income tax return AND my husband got a terrific bonus from work. We paid off almost all of our bills completely... and thought that finally we would get ourselves ahead. Then March came along.. when the weather warmed up all of the snow melted and my sump pump shit out trying to keep up with the extreme amount of water in my crawlspace. I noticed one night that our house was a bit colder than usual and saw that our furnace didn't appear to be working anymore. It was too late to call someone out to look at it so I decided to wait until the morning, that's when we discovered the sump pump. Water had made it's way up to my furnace, it wasn't completely submerged but obviously the water had damaged it in some way. My husband and I decided to give it a day or two to dry out before calling someone out to fix it. That alone cost us over 500 dollars... we thought we were in the clear after that. It would take us time to catch up again but nothing terrible. THEN (yes it continues) my husband, the lovely observant man he is, noticed that the water we thought was melting snow was not melting snow... that there was water coming up from a crack in our driveway. Wouldn't you know it? The city came out to kick at the pavement and declare that it was our responsibility not theirs. I'm still trying to exhaust all of my free efforts before putting things in order to pay for it ourselves. I'm fairly certain that we will not be able to afford the few grand (at the least...) it will cost to fix it. All the while, water is piddling out all over my driveway into my neighbor's yard and there's tons of sludge and silt in the middle of my driveway as well. How fuckin' fun. Did I mention we are still continuing to get snow? It's March already... the weather definitely needs to break already. I don't feel capable of dealing with the cold anymore.

I sound really negative right now. Honestly, I'm not.. I'm sick of the anxiety constantly churning my stomach, walking around with constant butterflies. I know things will work out somehow.. they always do and I truly believe in having a positive view on things, I'm trying really. My spirit feels a little broken though.

Sage's milestones: well.. she's crawling everywhere now, getting in to absolutely everything she possibly can. She has also recently started pulling herself up with ease on anything and everything that will support her. Sometimes watching her I can see the wheels just turning in her little head... if I move this way I can get to here. We're still working on executing those thoughts but she's definitely getting there. A little too fast if you ask me! She's saying mama often, babbling much of the day. She's a dream baby.. occupies herself easily and knows what she wants. We're not overly interested in food at all but I keep offering it to her just in case. She's tried banana, apple, pear, carrot, avocado, and sweet potato. Oh.. and she ate a few stars one afternoon out of my can of chicken and stars soup, she really liked those. ♥

Homeschooling is going really well. We decided to take this week off for spring break. I think the boys needed it. Aidan is reading more and more by himself with little help from me. I moved him up to first grade now because he just really seemed to grasp most of the Kindergarten curriculum. I felt to keep drilling him on that sort of thing was redundant. We picked up The Story of the World books and are working our way through them. All of the boys enjoy them and I need to find some activities to compliment them. Everybody is learning how to read music and two of my boys are learning how to play the guitar. Aidan is picking up the piano quite well.. as much as our money issues are getting me down right now I definitely feel the keyboard was an excellent purchase. Music is so important, I think. I attempted to join a homeschooling group in my area but I'm still awaiting approval.. I'm a bit saddened by this but understand that people have lives away from the computer. I'm not sure we can afford the field trips right now but feel that the boys would surely benefit from interacting with other kids and I know I need to be around other moms. Hopefully somebody gets back to me really soon on that. April 1st, the boys have a class at the library with a few other homeschooled kiddos.. I hope they enjoy it.

Today is J's birthday! I will edit to add more later! Happy Birthday Little Man #2!!

I have been so crabby lately. I'm really not sure why but I can speculate a bunch of different reasons.

1. It's winter. I'm always miserable in the cold but I can't fathom leaving here. I'm definitely starting to feel the cabin fever set in. Having everybody home this year probably doesn't help that feeling.

2. No one listens to me lately so I immediately start on a rant before giving anybody the opportunity to actually just do what I ask. Did that make sense? Even T likes to wait and wait to do something, then gets all huffy when I repeat myself and become slightly more shrill each time.

3. I'm not happy. This reason scares me.... why am I not happy? Am I depressed with my appearance? my life? What's so unhappy about right now?

4. I have no friends. The few actual friends I do have live far away. I don't get out, I don't get a break... I don't think I really need a break exactly but a change in things would probably be nice. I do get tired of the same shit day in, day out.

5. Money. Money is always tight this time of year... tax return time can't come soon enough. Each year things get better as T and I grow and mature, we're far more responsible with our money now than we were 10 yrs ago.

6. All of the above.

I'm pretty sure it's a mix of all of the above. The seasonal and money thing I can't do much about right now. I will be looking in to the other reasons though.

It's nice to be back home. I went to stay at my grandparent's for the past 4 days. I love that I have the ability to do that if I want right now. Initially we went so A could be the Golden Ball Boy for the Moose Lodge, my papa is very involved with the Moose and has been for a long, long time. I was the Golden Ball Girl way back in the day. I love going to my grandparent's though.. it's nice to sit and talk with my grandma and my papa loves to cook for everybody. We watch game shows and just everything feels so relaxed there for me. I've noticed I tend to gravitate there once a month and stay for a few days.♥

Some pics from our stay!

Once again it's been too long since I last blogged. It seems I get so caught up in life around me and feel pressed for time, I sacrifice writing because it takes time to do well. So I guess while I sit enjoying my morning cup of tea it's only fair that I journal the last week out.

J got his haircut. He's loving it!

Before:

100_1431-1.jpg

After:

Kobi's new-do

We started schooling again this week. I'm pleased with how things are going so far. Everyone seems much more keen to learn or maybe it's just my outlook on it all. The workbooks I got for them have been a big hit, the one I picked up for K is definitely much better at explaining 6th grade math than I ever could be.

Our measurements so far are:

• 1/8/08 plant A: 3.5cm  B: 4cm  C: 3cm  D: 3.75cm

• 1/9/08 plant A 4cm  B: 5.5cm  C: 4cm  D: 4cm

Our observations thus far are that yep! It's growing!! J was amazed that in one day plant B grew 1.5cm.



And in other exciting news......

hands and knees

Look at her! She's definitely getting ready to crawl..

ready?

Won't be long, that's for sure! And look at how well she's sitting now:

smiley girl

One more.. because I just think it's so cute,

little sister ♥ big brother

2007 came, went and I survived.. woohoo! I have many plans for this year, let's hope I accomplish them.

To start with, I am proud of myself, the past three days I have yelled very little. Instead, I take a breath and calmly tell the children exactly what it is that I want them to do or what it is that I think they should/shouldn't be doing. The breath thing seems to help. I'm a yeller by nature so this is rather difficult for me at times.

I told myself at the beginning of this week to work on a room of the house a day, because of the holidays my house was totally trashed. It was almost overwhelming but I figure a room a day wouldn't be too bad. While I didn't exactly get everything in the room I was working on that day done, I did get more done than nothing! Yay me, for being positive.

My bathroom is half clean.. I'm dreading the toilet. My boys just have no sympathy for me and having to clean up their pee. At times I think they don't even aim for the toilet or else my floor wouldn't be yellow with pee and have a toilet paper wad glued to it (tmi much?). I'm hoping to solve this problem by making the boys draw at the beginning of the week and one of them will have to clean it nightly before bed. I just don't think it's fair for me to have to!

My kitchen is  done, counters cleaned and dishes washed. The only thing I fudged on was the floor.. in my defense I don't have a mop and the bucket is currently outside under a foot of snow. I think it's kinda hard to wash the floor with nothing to do so with. I should put a mop on my list of things to pick up.. the last one burned out when I was 42 weeks pregnant and obsessively scrubbing floors.

The living room was put off for today, it's not as done as I would like it to be but that's because I spent part of today finishing the kitchen. I'm hoping when T gets home tonight to maybe get a few minutes with free hands to pick up the floor and whatnot. I need to vacuum as well. S is starting to hang out more on the floor so I'm going to have to watch little pieces of things soon enough.. I'm so not ready for a mobile little one.

I'm hoping to be completely on track with a clean house by next Monday so we can start schooling in earnest again.

...having clothes you like to wear gives you a whole new and different outlook on yourself. I actually feel almost skinny today. I feel curvy and attractive, I'm so glad I was able to buy some clothes.