Top Ten Part Two

8. I have acquired a new skill. I would love to call it a talent, but I'm not there yet. Probably never will be, because I'm now realizing that to be talented at this requires math....we won't go there. Any hoo....I'm borrowing a good friend's sewing machine and have been testing my handiwork. I started with cloth napkins, which we now use daily, and have graduated to placemats. This first set is nice and wide, but a bit short in height, but I love the pattern. We will have napkins to match these too. And...I ingeniously figured out a way for us to keep track of which napkin belongs to whom: buttons! I see a small specifically colored button for each family member. The napkins do not have to be cleaned after every meal. Many meals, yes, but I have more than one set. But each set has its colored buttons, so we always can recognize our own. It's worked out great, and keeps me from buying napkin rings!

I have a lot of plans for that sewing machine, and hope to be able to get one of my own eventually! I'm hoping to try to make each of the girls a little tote bag with their initials on it for Valentine's Day...shhh, don't tell.

7. Exercise.  Because, remember this:

Yeah, well, me too.  Painfully.  Cute as a button, large as a bag of flour.  It seems that 9.9 pounds of baby doesn't do a body good.  During, or afterwards.  Or 2 1/2 years later.

Top Ten Reasons Why...

I haven't been blogging. And, laziness is not going to be a reason.

I've thought about blogging.  Every day.  Every night I have posts going through my head -- and oh are they good!  But then, a million other things come up and the day ends, and then all I have are the thoughts in my head.  (There are a LOT of thoughts in there too.)

So, I figured for a few days I would give you some explanation about why I haven't been blogging and what on earth we are doing down south this winter.  Here we go:

10.  Working.  You may or may not know the saga of the past 8 months with my new career/train wreck, but the short version is that I'm not employed full time right now, but hope to get back into the school system for next year.  There are some good scenarios on the horizon, so we just have to hope that things work out.  I've been left bitter (oh yes, more than before) and with a realization that if something seems to good to be true, then it most definitely is...so now I just don't really put any stock in hope and just have to take a more day to day go with the flow type of lifestyle.  Which, come to think of it, might be what I needed in life.  Ho hum, maybe there's a life lesson in there somewhere.  Darn it.  Lemons --->  lemonade.

Any hoo... I have managed to find a part time job with someone I have known for years from the girls past child care center.  She offered me some work grooming and improving their curriculum, as well as doing some teacher training.  I'm very excited to do that, so I guess I can be considered somewhat of an Educational Consultant.  ClaraBelle is going to the school half days, and I can bring Baby Belle with  me days I work there, and then I do work from home as well.  It's a great situation for now.  I'm also able to give the remaining early childhood materials I have made and accumulated away to people who I know will use them rather than just keeping them in a box in my garage.  And my mom's garage...don't know what we'll do with those since they are 728 miles away.

On to more reasons -- and just to let you know up front, you're not getting all ten today!

9.  Naps.  We like our naps in this house.  Thankfully, most of the kids do too.  Oh sure, every now and then there's some bucking and general difficulties, but for the most part, every day is nap day. Big Belle doesn't argue about joining in on the weekends or other days she has off from school, and some days can be found taking a snooze on the couch right before dinner.  You know what they say "when in Rome...".  In our tiny little house, it's not like I can get a lot done without making noise, so what is left to do but nap?  (At least, that sounds like a good rationalization to me.)  Sure, some days I feel guilty.  After all, folding laundry isn't exactly LOUD, blogging wouldn't exactly wake the neighbors...but then my wonderful husband reminds me that my days off will not last forever, so I might as well take advantage of it!  And before you know it, I'm curled up with a favorite blanket, zoning out to some travel cable show, snuggled with the dogs, and I doze off.  (Of course, it's no wonder why I don't sleep well at night.)

Please excuse me, because now I must go do a few things which, as of this time, I have not thought to include on my list which is:  feeding/cleaning/breaking apart/mending and any thing else for the kids that might come up, which right now is finding the right Saturday morning show for Baby Belle.

We Weather the Weather!

We love the cold, it still runs in our Yankee blood. So when we noticed we only had two beers left in the fridge, we figured we wouldn't let slushy roads and some ice keep us barricaded in. So we bundled up and walked to the store, bought some beer --and maybe a zebra cake for the kids--and then enjoyed our ridiculously steep driveway redneck style.

Wow, we're boring.

There is absolutely nothing going on here.  But I've had requests for posts about what we're up to, so I'll try to make what is going on -- again, nothing -- sound exciting.

On the me front, I've read 3 1/2 books in the past 2ish weeks, and they were all 100% fantastic.    Killing Kennedy (also by Bill O'Reilly), Living With Honor by Salvatore Giunta, and then I finished the second half of the book Winter of the World by Edward Rutherford that I had put down several months ago.  All were absolutely wonderful, and I highly recommend them!

Hmm, what else...Ack!  Nothing!  I've learned to accept laundry a little more openly than before my foray as a non-working mother, but putting it all away is the pits.  Horrible, awful, terrible, horrendous, miserable.  Still not as bad as washing dishes, but close.

I'm trying my hand at home made cloth napkins.  I have them cut out, pinned and/or basted, and a good friend kindly dropped off her sewing machine for me to finish things off...this could be the interesting part.... I'll keep you posted.

Really, other than that, nothing else is interesting.  Maybe it's the mid-winter doldrums.  We're quite cold here this week -- which means we are in the 40s max, cold for here.  Especially 5 or more days in a row.  We had a winter storm warning last week, but never got anything more than rain.  A wintry mix is scheduled for this Friday, but again I don't expect anything.

Perhaps I'll feel a little more motivated tomorrow to figure out something interesting!

Cucumber Complex

This isn't the first time I've mentioned this, which makes it extra pathetic, but there's a Belle in this house who is 1) going to get an extra vegetable on her plate tonight and 2) clean up the cucumber she tossed under the bookshelf last night.

First of all, I expect more creativity than that. I'm thoroughly insulted that she thinks she can get away with that (again).

Second of all, for REAL! It's a small piece of cucumber. She only had two, was it really that painful!.

Exasperating indeed.

Chew on This

I found this under the pillow where napping was supposed to take place, plus another wrapper in the toilet....

This from the child who came to me asking why her thumb was neon pink.

Yes, sugar free, but at this point does that even matter?

Diapers: The Final Frontier

The end is near.  I can sense it, at times even smell it.  Our wallets are tingling in anticipation.

It is, the end of diapers.

3 children, each roughly 2 1/2 years apart...we're talking 7+ years of constantly purchasing diapers.  I'm not even going to pretend to want to do the math on that.  Feel free if you're so inclined.

Aside from the sheer cost of diapers, I'm occasionally racked with the guilt of what this does to our world.  Did you know diapers average a 500 year lifespan?  Again, not doing any math to even think about how many diapers we've gone through, and we certainly aren't the only ones around diapering their children, but sheesh!  Had I known I would have had 3 children, I certainly would have looked into the (now) trend of cloth diapering, but it's a larger up front investment.  However, my intense distaste for doing laundry would probably have rendered that idea counterproductive.

Then I'm reminded of these parents who choose "diaper-free" baby raising.  WHAT????  There is no way you can have any semblance of a life if all you are doing is watching your baby for a signal that they are going to "eliminate".  Catch a nap for crying out loud!  I'll leave it at that.

So, anyways, it's not like we're diaper free yet.  But Baby Belle has shown a definite interest in the potty for several months now.  Some may chastise me for not jumping on that interest and going for the potty training right away, but with all of the stresses from work ending, and then knowing that we were traveling 12 hours in a car at Christmas, I really didn't feel like dealing with potty training.  Yes, I didn't feel like it.  It really is all about me, isn't it.

However, we're home now.  It's winter -- though springtime when we can be outside a lot would be a lot easier...hmmm-- so we have officially started the process.  We bribed.  A few weeks ago we mentioned Minnie Mouse underwear for going in the potty.  (Minnie and Mickey are HOT on Baby Belle's list of the greatest things ever...and this surely peaked her interest!)  She spent a week nearly non-stop talking about the underwear, so we bought some thinking there would be a tangible goal.  She slept with them the first night.  No, not IN them...WITH them.  Snuggled up.  We popped on a pair the next morning, but success only lasted about 30 minutes.  Fortunately the result ended up on an uncarpeted area of floor, so it wasn't too devastating.

I'm not looking for potty training boot camp, potty training in one day, or any of the other parenting fads, so who knows how long this will last.  She enjoys sitting on the potty, but has yet to do anything productive in it, but I'm okay with that.  I'll keep you posted, I know you'll be on pins and needles.

This and That and 2013

Well, the first thing I would like to say is to address our family:

 NEW RULE: Any one experiencing any type of illness or malaise during holiday visitation times shall be herefore required to wear a face mask in the spirit of goodwill and humanity to family. It is the time of giving yes, but not sharing sicknesses. This year saw the fall of Chris (not to be confused with the birth of Christ) right at Christmas which earned us a 3 hour Minute Clinic (or as the manager there called it "Decade Clinic") in a Winter Storm, albeit for a very helpful prescription of Tamiflu. Grandma and Aunt Danielle succumbed with colds and bronchitis, and then right before departure I came down with a cold that left me subtly miserable and absolutely exhausted for five days. Now of course this wasn't as bad as the stomach sickness we brought with us during the Holidays of a few years ago...but you never know. So, from now on -- maybe we all get face masks in our stockings.

 With that out of the way, I would like to tell you two extremely boring pieces of information which have made me very happy. The first of which is that when packing to leave to return home, a miserable horrible task, I decided to try a 'packing trick' I have heard of before but have never used. Perhaps it was the fact that this time it was on Pinterest, and goodness knows if it's on Pinterest it MUST be good...but call me inspired, I ROLLED our clothes. I have heard that if you roll your clothes they would stay less wrinkled. I'll be the first to admit, wrinkling isn't something I really give a lot of thought to (we buy a LOT of Wrinkle Releaser here), but the real gain I was going for was the space it is supposed to save. You can imagine returning home after Christmas, with three young girls, any space we could gain would be a plus. And I'm proud to say -- it worked! I honestly think we saved quite a bit of space by rolling the clothes rather than folding and stacking (and yes, they did remain unwrinkled upon unpacking) and were able to fit more of our wonderful Christmas presents in our bags to take back with us.

 Boring tidbit two: each year when we stay at my mom's house I say I'm going to do laundry before we leave to return home. But, when it comes time to do it -- ugh -- it never gets done. (Laundry just won't listen and do itself.) However...this year...I did it. We did it. Actually, I think Chris did most of it. Either way, it was done. And let me tell you, never have I been so ridiculously happy to unpack bags in my life! How wonderful to unpack, knowing I'm not just adding to days and days of laundry -- it can go straight from the suitcase right to the drawers. This is huge people. Huge. Alrighty, that brings us up to date. We're home. We're healthy. Big Belle reluctantly headed back to school today. After an ultra relaxing and super lazy few new year days, I'm getting the house back under control and even working on some potential work ventures. I have some new books to read, a blanket to crochet, writing to do, children to homeschool, a house to clean, and more. Bring it on 2013 -- and this wasn't even a New Year's post!

 PS: Here's to two of the best books I have read this year: 1) The Greater Journey by David McCullough The Greater Journey By McCullough, David (Google Affiliate Ad)The Greater Journey By McCullough, David (Google Affiliate Ad) and Fall of Giants By Follett, Ken (Google Affiliate Ad).  I highly recommend both if you're looking for a good read.  Long, but good.