Wonderful Kids - Trouble with Moving

Considering everything going on in life, I have 2 amazing kids.  Life has been quite crazy as the bank plays games with our mortgage and we start to pack the house.  Carolyn mostly gets it and can verbalize her feelings.  But James, one who has always clung to me, is really struggling.  After having a fever on Sunday and waking up to me gone from his nap.  And then watching me pack up various things around the house, he lost it this morning over bandaids.  He got some out and I put them back because he didn't have a cut.  He got mad and bit me.  I picked him up and him in his crib.  Then for about 10 minutes we did a bit of a dance - I put him in his crib, walked out and closed his door, and stood in the bathroom doorway.  He climbed out of his crib, came out of his room, and tried to hit, kick, pinch, and bite me.  I tolerated the hit and kicking, staying as calm as possible.  When he tried to bite I scooped him up and we started over.  After 5-6 trips he was half-heartedly trying to hit me and I said "What do you need bud?"  To which he put both arms up and asked me to pick him up.  So I scooped him up and went and snuggled on our bed with him.  I talked to him about moving, telling him again that we're all going with and so are all of his things.  He asked some questions and seemed to get it a little more.  I'm glad I can be with him a lot to try and offer some comfort.  What broke my heart a little is he told me I've been working too much.  But things will all settle down in less than a week.  I'm hoping that with packing some things into the trunk will help him a little more.  I'm going to let the kids choose what to take with for the first trip.

I should get to bed at a decent time tonight because life is about to get very hectic until next Wednesday!

We have a Reader!

Yep, that's right, Carolyn read her first book today.  And she actually read the words!  Last week I wrote about her being interested in Reading Eggs.  Well, she continues to enjoy this website and has completed levels 11-30 in the past week!  Only 10 pre-reading levels left and she might just get through those in the next 3-4 days, depending on how much time we allow her to play.  I don't think I'll be purchasing a subscription since she got through so much and I don't like her sitting in front of the computer all the time.  But it really is a great program and she truly enjoys it.  She's learning so many sight words from the program that today she read one of her Tag books.  We were just hanging out and she picked up her book and started reading it.  I helped her by pointing to the words and helped with 1 or 2.  But she sounded words out and read the whole story.  We definitely celebrated and she read the book to Jon when he got home.  James is trying to get in on the action too and pretended to read me a book later in the day, too cute.  I'm excited to see her start branching out and trying to read more things now.  She's such a perfectionist that she shys away from sounding out words and prefers to just memorize them all.  But I have a feeling she's really going to take off now that she's had some success.

I feel like we always hear about how kids have no imagination these days and that they don't have enough free play.  Of course, we also hear about how families eat a lot of convenience foods.  And my jaw drops when I see statistics on the amount of television that kids supposedly watch.  My children watched 0 television this week M-F (football weekends).  And the weather is cold too, so we didn't spend a on of time outside.  What we did do, though, was use imaginations.  Carolyn and James have become awesome at entertaining themselves.  Early in the week while I was slicing onions and potatoes for our baked potato soup dinner, they pretended they were camping.  Carolyn has named her stuffed animals Mary, Laura and baby Carrie.  Anyone want to guess what chapter books we're reading right now?  We've never been camping, but it's awesome to see Carolyn taking books and acting them out.  Watching my kids play this past week I now understand why I don't know what toys to get rid of.  We didn't clean much up in the basement this week as they played.  Partially because I'm trying to see what we might weed out. And honestly, they played with nearly every toy down there!  They love to bake and play kitchen, we played Go Fish, Ants in the Pants, and Cooties.  We found old school Sesame Street figurines and I demanded cookies as Cookie Monster.  They pretend to workout with me, and spend time shooting baskets off the trampoline.  It's amazing the variety of play accomplished by 2 small people in a week's time.  But I get out of their way and participate as asked, because I realize their play is their job and important stuff is being worked out.  I'm looking forward to how dynamics will change once we're in the new house as well.

We had a scare with my grandfather this past week, but he appears to be out of the woods at this time.  He is home and the physical therapist has said she doesn't feel needed.  So I'm very glad that God has smiled down upon us once again and allowed us to keep this member of our family with us a little longer.  Carolyn is super excited about going to visit him next month.  Realizing it might be the last time I see him, I am looking forward to just being there and soaking in as much as possible.  Time with family is so precious, and we need to slow down just a bit to be sure we're spending as much time with each other as possible.

Time and balancing work and family has been a big struggle for me mentally lately.  I want to help provide for the family as much as I can.  With the move and large outlays of money, I feel like I should take on as many opportunities as possible.  But, alas, there are only so many hours in a day.  My hours with Tutor.com are expanding and I truly enjoy the work I do for the company.  I feel connected to my mentors and many of my tutors, and I have a boss that is great to work with.  I billed over $1k from the company last month!  K12 continues to be hit or miss, with expectations every changing.  I don't enjoy the work, but the paycheck is certainly nice.  I'm conflicted as to how long I should try to hold on to this position because I've never quit a job in such a short time frame.  I'm also slightly nervous about the move and how all the numbers will shake out, so I feel like I should hold on until we move.  I'm not looking forward to the prospect of having to take my computer with to Arizona to check-in on my classes while we're gone though.  Did I mention I'm not enjoying the hassling of kids to do their work, last minute meeting anouncements, and completely pointless "professional development"?  On top of these jobs is also my in-person tutoring.  I expect to retain 2 of my current clients as I move.  And gaining more could be easy if I so desire.  And so I struggle with deciding when enough is enough and when making money is interfering with enjoying my family.  I feel like if I can keep my contribution around $1k/month I should be happy.  After all, our mortgage is going down with the move.  We'd be comfortable at that level with plenty of extras.  And considering I'm at over $100 on my time sheets already this month, there's no doubt I'll make it there.  So I just have to make the tough decision of whether to cut and run now or wait until after the move.  I've trusted God so far, I just want to be sure I'm reading Him right as I do feel more and more at peace with leaving k12 behind.

Time to go spend some quality time with Jon before family pictures tomorrow!

Learning to Read!

Carolyn has just passed the 4.5 year mark and is taking off with reading.  I was looking online tonight at You Can Read, thinking about whether or not to print out some of the work pages.  I've been struggling a little with how to work with her on reading, since she's quite stubborn and has her own agenda generally.  She also is very shy about trying new things and often won't try to sound out any words.  We do a ton of reading to both children, so I know she's getting exposure that way.  But she came over wondering what I was looking at, so I decided to see if she'd be interested.  We started with going over the 4 sight words in the first lesson.  Then we paged through towards the end and she started reading!  The only prompting I gave her was pointing to the words on the screen, and she read the first sentence!   It was absolutely amazing and we spent a few minutes exchanging hi-fives all around.  She then asked to keep going, and we went through the words in the first 8 lessons.  Of the 32 words we looked at, I'd say she has at least 25 of them down already.  It was so cool to watch.

I then took a look at Reading Eggs.  There is a 14 day trial that I think we'll do for the next couple weeks.  But I think it's below Carolyn's level in that she has ALL her letter sounds already.  Her pefectionist learning style just doesn't seem to fit very well.  But since there's a free trial, we'll take a look and see how she likes it.  I'm just so excited that she really is learning how to read!  I would bet she'll be reading fairly easily by the time she starts kindergarten, just like I was.  So awesome to watch her develop.

While I was looking at the site with Carolyn, James was literally trying to push her out of the way saying "I read too!"  It was really cute, although we certainly don't appreciate the pushing.  He wants to be big so bad.  I honestly don't remember what he should be working on at his age though.  He'll be 2.5 in another month.  We've been working mostly on colors and he'll ask what letters are printed on shirts/sweatshirts that we're wearing.  I probably should start working on identifying letters with him (maybe?).  He's so interested in learning everything that Carolyn is.

I'm so glad that we chose to keep Carolyn home this year.  Not only will it make moving that much easier, but the bond these kids have formed is awesome.  Carolyn often helps translate James' words, which eliminates some of his frustration.  And they learn to take turns and sort things out between each other more than they would elsewhere.  This is a relationship that they will have for life as well.  I'm excited to get them into a community where their learning will be pushed so they can keep developing at this warpspeed.  I think that going to the children's museum in Glenview is going to be awesome once we're closer.

House is Sold!

Another crazy week here for us.  Spent the beginning of the week making phone calls and payments to various places to ensure we were ready to close on Wednesday.  Had to get the closing check on the way to closing.  The actual meeting only took about 45 minutes and went smoothly.  I have the new owners' phone number and we will arrange to transfer keys just before Thanksgiving.  Three weeks from tomorrow we will begin moving into the new house!  We are all very excited.

My 94yo grandfather had surgery this past week.  It was hoped to be minor, routine surgery to remove his gallbladder.  Unfortunately, the infection was much progressed.  He is stable now, but we are not sure how things will proceed.  As siblings we are keeping each other informed and I hope to hear good reports from my oldest brothers as the week progresses.  Our prayers are of course with my grandfather and all those caring for him at this time.

Stepping on the scale this morning, I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  I haven't been feeling well the last few days, but I have stuck with my workouts as planned.  I was quite pleasantly surprised to find a 2.5lb loss from last week.  This has pushed me over the 20lb mark and I am now down 21.6lbs from where I started!  While I still have some more weight to lose, this is a fantastic mark for me as I've always struggled to lose more than 5lbs in any one try.  So while this has taken longer than I would have hoped, it makes me very happy.  I put on sweatpants from last winter today and they are very baggy.  I have to roll the waist so they don't drag on the floor or sag in the butt.  The knees even fit a little strangely.  Definitely weird to see, but when I stop to think that I've lost over 20lbs and many inches, it makes sense.  I'm glad I kept all my old clothes as now I should start fitting into some of them.  I think part of the recent weight loss is that I am officially done nursing.  So my body is now accepting of losing the weight because it doesn't need to store it to feed any child.  It is possible that I will get into the 160's by Christmas, would be awesome.  If I can get down to 155 by next summer, I'll be ecstatic.  That's where I was at my lightest in college.  For now, I'll just keep focusing on filling my body with good protein, plenty of fat, and medium carbs.  Increasing the fat defiintely helps me stay full longer and, I think, is what encourages my body to shed the extra weight.

7 years later

I lost my mom 7 years ago, at 10pm last night.  Some days it feels like it was just yesterday.  And others it feels like much longer.  So much has happened since I lost her - getting married, buying a house, having 2 kids, and we're now onto selling the first house and buying another.  My kids are lucky to have a special guardian angel, and so am I.  I know my mom is smiling down upon our family and I hope that she appreciates all that I'm trying to do for my children.  I know she would like the preschool projects and cooking activities I do with the kids.  She would love this new house and how awesome the kitchen will be to cook in but yet still be involved in everything going on around the house.  I will always miss being able to share my kids with her and they will miss having a second grandmother.  But we look through pictures and talk about her a lot.  To help the kids differentiate, she's "Grandma Angel".  Carolyn doesn't have so many bad dreams anymore, but when she did we talked about asking her Grandma Angel for a hug.  She would tell us in the morning about the hugs she got, and it sounded like she honestly felt like she'd been hugged.  James broken the candle I had bought for my mom that had also survived a few moves a couple weeks ago.  I had to try to explain to Carolyn that the candle could never be replaced - too hard for a 4yo to grasp.  But I'm looking forward to finding a spot in the new home to display some of my memories of my mother.  There are some built-in bookcases and I think I'll take a shelf or 2 for my memory book, pictures, and angels.  It's still hard to believe that I was only 22 when my mom passed away, way too young to lose such an important person.  But also makes me realize how important it is to value every day and try to be with my kids as much as possible.  I just truly never know how much longer I have with all of them. 

I wasn't feeling great today, so we watched Tumblebooks online.  Pretty cool program really and Carolyn probably could have sat there all afternoon listening.  Yesterday neither child napped much, but Carolyn got in a little phonics work and some math.  I'm figuring tomorrow will be a better day and we'll get to some preschool lessons.  Saturday we're heading to Lambs' Farm so there will likely be no naps.  Might also pull out the mixer and bake a cake tomorrow in my mom's memory.  I'm looking forward to all of my usual holiday baking pretty soon in the new house.  We found out today our mortgage is actually going to be less than what we're currently paying, so we should have some wiggle room to buying baking stuff, yay!

Phonics, Weight Loss, Potty Training

The end of this has gone pretty well.  We've been relaxing a bit and both kids have had some breakthroughs in various things.  I've even had a breakthrough with my weight loss as well.  Seeing 175.0 on the scale this morning means that I have lost 10% of my starting weight!  If you had asked me at the beginning of this calendar year if I imagined weighing this amount, I would have said no.  But it's great and I can't wait to see even more weight come off.  I've recommited to getting fit by 30 and got in all 3 workouts this week.  I definitely lost strength in the month I took off, but after a week I feel I'm right back to where I was.  So nice to start to feel physically strong again!

On Thursday Carolyn chose to work on her phonics worksheets.  She really sails through them and can easily identify the sounds of all letters.  The one sheet she struggled with involved a lowercase q.  She had no idea what it should look like, but recognized when I wrote it down for her.  She enjoyed working through the sheets and finding the different sounds.  Yesterday was a tough day as James wasn't feeling well, so no preschool work happened.  We discussed Carolyn's desire to read this morning though as she asked Jon to read her an article from his magazine.  And I told her that the place we're going will give her a prize and take her picture with the first book she learns how to read.  She proceeded to pull out a book and "read" it.  She does an awesome job of using the pictures to tell a story.  But we had to tell her that the library wants her to actually read the words.  I'm thinking I may pull out the sight words a little more often with her and maybe make sentences together.

After breakfast this morning, as Jon went to shower James walked to the bathroom and anounced he needed to go potty.  He's being doing this from time to time now, but I try not to pay much attention because it usually just leads to him playing in the bathroom.  But today he went into the bathroom, took off his feetie pjs and diaper, and went pee in his potty!  He sat there for a while and seemed to be working out what it feels like to actually pee.  I could see him working with the muscles to sort it out.  Of course we made a big deal and gave him high fives.  Carolyn even gave him a "prize".  I'm wondering if this will be his way of potty training, which is fine by me.  We will see what ends up happening, but it's very exciting since he's not yet 2.5.

This morning I deposited my savings bonds into our checking account.  It was a bittersweet moment, as this was one of our safety nets.  However, we're using the money for the downpayment on our forever home.  So how exciting is that!  I still have 1 left since I haven't gotten around to getting the death certificate for my great grandmother.  She'd be about 120 if she was alive today!  But with all of this house stuff, we have had that doing things the right way does have its rewards.  Jon has 1 of his credit scores over 800, the other two very high 700.  All 3 of my credit scores are over 800!  Because of this, we qualify for some breaks with our mortgage including a super low rate and a lower down payment.  We will continue to be good stewards of what God has blessed us with and I pray that we will be able to hand down our financial knowledge as well as a good start to our children.  Because of the fantastic start we have, we will have no mortgage by the time we're 60 and we should be able to save amply for our retirement and the kids' college.  God is definitely a great provider.

Painting Pumpkins, Leaf Rubbings

Yesterday was creativity day in our house.  We had nowhere to go, but 2 very energetic children.  So after breakfast and listening to both kids begging to go outside, we got dressed and I threw some old tshirts on them for painting.  We took the pie pumpkins they got at the pumkin farm on Sunday and I brought out their sidewalk paint.  I figured that way when they missed and inevitably painted on the driveway, it would just wash away.  They had fun painting, but it was fairly cold out so they complained about that as well.  Afterwards they rode their bikes until they were too cold.  We went into the basement and they played while I cleaned out the toy box.  Designated some things for donation and others for garbage.  Created some extra space in there for the move!

In the afternoon Carolyn fell off her bike.  After cleaning up a scrape and having snack, she did venture back outside.  It was quite windy so I suggested they gather some leaves to make an art project.  They loved this idea and ran around a bit finding leaves.  We brought them inside and sandwhiched them between 2 pieces of paper and then did rubbings.  They turned out as though you would expect from a 2 and 4 year old.  But they loved it, and Carolyn added extra things to her drawing.  She was very proud and told Jon about it when he came home.  Overall, a great crafty day in our house.

The pumpkin didn't turn out so well, as once the paint dried it flaked off.  That just means we might be able to paint them again.  Carolyn is really hoping to make a Jack O Lantern this year, so we will head to our usual family pumpkin farm to pick up a bigger pumpkin.  The kids tried to push the plastic face pieces we have into their pumpkins, but they were just too hard.

Our buyers have their financing!  After all the stress induced by our realtor, everything is good.  We have a letter confirming the financing pending paperwork we submitted yesterday and the typical employment verification 10 days prior to closing.  We go tonight to hand in paperwork to our lender for our purchase.  We printed everything last night and father W2, 1099, and paycheck stubs.  Looking forward to getting this part over with.  We will be moved in by Thanksgiving and can fully make this home ours.  No more saving random amounts of money for a new down payment - just for repairs.  No more repairing/replacing things we know will really only benefit new owners.  No more living the "when we get to..." part of life.  Just loving every minute of a great town in a great area.  Our sellers want to move the closing date up to 11/16 so they have the weekend to move out, I expect to okay that with Fred today.  This will also give us an extra day to go check out the house empty as well.  So excited to move!

I'm wondering this morning where my kids are.  It's 7:30 and neither one is awake.  Enjoying the morning calm though before what will be a very busy day.  I'm ready for snuggles though!