2 weeks later

I am home.
Two weeks ago my husband was fed up with my sister in law letting the 15 year old do everything he wanted. So 10am I decided I needed to load up the kids and go do something about it. We left at noon, AKA nap time. We stopped once at a rest stop, then spent the night in Eugene. Then Friday morning we left at 4am and I drove till 6am with the kids sleeping. Then we had breakfast and we were in Redding at 9ish. Then Modesto by 2:30, after a couple of stops. We spent the weekend with my parents and then the week with my sister in law.
I spent 5 out of the 6 weekdays I was there, at the court house doing temporary guardianship paperwork and I am still not done yet. My sister in law is a very messed up person, and my guidance helped in some areas, but I could easily spend a month there. (Think the nanny tv show, but the nanny with 2 kids of her own, cause that is what it was.)
Yesterday we (Z, G, & 15 year old A) left California at 7am for home. We stopped for an early lunch, then left Redding at noon and made it to Eugene by 5pm. We arrived home before 11pm last night.
While I was away my husband put up the stairway gate, organized his closet, cleaned, did laundry, bought a table and lamp for Z.

So now we are 5...

Wait there is more

We just found out my husband's aunt (her son is my husband's BFF, so to speak) has stage 4 cancer.
Another roller coaster year ahead....Hope you all are strapped in tight.

Wanted: 3 houses

So on one side we have my mom, fighting cancer and will hopefully under go steam cell in the next 2 months. Next to her we have my dad, who has managed to do damage to his spinal cord (who works as a laborer, I might add.) Who are "taking" care of my brother, who has schizophrenia. On the other side we have my husband's father who is recovering from pneumonia that put him in the ICU for 2 months (a year ago), and his wife (my mother in law) who has her diabetes under control. Then we have my sister in law who is having herself a pitty party after finally getting out of a 16 year marriage that she knew she should have never got into. She wants someone to hold her hand and her excuse for life is "my life is hard so I can't help it that I stay up till 2am cleaning and watching religious videos and then can't get out of bed at 6:30 to get my kids to school on time." Now her two oldest children say the exact same thing. "My life is hard so I can't help it if I smoke pot everyday" and "My life is hard so I can't help it if I lie and make shit up" (even though I know better.)
Who needs Jerry Springer when you have family...oh and I almost forgot...we have my brother in law who bought a 2009 Dodge Ram and just spent $18K on parts to make it totally white trash like, because he likes to "take care of his baby" who is going to sale when the 2010's come out (so he can start all over.) Then my brother who in general is doing well and hopefully his wife can find a job soon and they can both help take care of my parents.
So just to be safe, let's make it 4 houses on 5-10 acres or 4 houses right next to each other. Thank God our parents have enough money to sustain themselves for now and hopefully they will have enough money to help us buy/build all these houses.

11 months later

As you can tell I am still not down to where I need to be, but I am mostly content. I am also wearing my $5 jeans from Macy's children's department. The little man G was 23 lbs and over 31" long today.

Home schooling

I spent all of last week (8 hours a day) researching home schooling materials. I must have book marked 15 books and 20 sites. After all that work I went to Costco on Friday and they had 3 packs of Kumon books for $12.99 that were age appropriate. Right now the two I am focusing on is "Cutting" and "Tracing."
Cutting just requires your child to cut along the grey line. It starts off very simple and then progresses into cutting out fun things your child can play with. Yesterday she cut out a train that I taped together and today a she cut out two combs. We are currently on lesson 8 in the book.
Tracing is not really tracing right now as much as it is...draw a line from this point to that point and stay inside the lines. It will get her ready to write her own name by herself.
We also have "Coloring" and "Easy Mazes." Coloring has the child color in a shape within a picture, then a page of connecting two points without touching any objects along the way. Easy Mazes so far is very similar to the tracing book.
Our set also included "Upper Case Letters" and "Numbers 1-30." Both of those involve tracing the actual letters or numbers so I plan to wait until we finish a couple of the other books first.

After doing all my home school reseach I have decided that Zuzu will be starting a basic Kindergarten homeschool ciriculum this fall. The home school material is very basic and she already knows most of the academics covered in the programs I am interested in using with her. Right now I am thinking of using Oak Meadows and some Enki stories and then throwing in some more academic materials as we progress.

In other news I can squeeze into my smallest pants...so much so that I could wear them, but they just aren't comfortable. I am still hanging out at 126 but I am starting to get a waist back slowly. Must get down a little more by June....

Thinking

It has begun. The open discussion of when to have child #3. I am excited to have another child, but the thought seems pre-mature since G is not even eating one solid meal a day. Then part of me thinks maybe it would be for the better just to have the closeness in age.
Did I mention my husband would like a March/April ('10) baby...

G just had his first swimming lesson yesterday. He looked so handsome in his little shorts. He is pretty fearless and calm in the water. He stuck his head down in the water numerous times and it never phased him.

Time stops for no one

My son is almost 10 months old and in 3 months I will have a 3 year old. The reading is slowly coming along for the 3 year old. My son is crawling, pulling up, trying to stand alone and all that good stuff. 2 sets of stairs, despite my constant pestering, no gates have been put up. Instead of putting the gates up my husband taught my son how to climb up them. Yes we have already an incident that resulted in cut gums and a scrapped chin. Of course it was my fault cause I was the one who turned my back for 30 seconds.

My brother's wedding is in 1 week. I am down to 127....not the 122-123 I dreamed of. My husband has been supplying me with girl scout cookies for the last month. If I know him, he still has one or two more boxes in his car with my name on them. I still have a week left....I am aiming for 125 by the wedding. For some reason I feel rounder this time around than I did 2 years ago. My hips are also an inch wider. So they didn't go all the way back this time. I got myself something to suck it all in and hopefully it will make me feel a little better about myself when I stand next to people 10 years younger than me next week. Zuzu is very excited about getting to wear a white dress, just not sure how she will do with walking down the aisle and throwing some flowers.

My son is still not really eating solids. I give him a tiny bite of two off of my plate at best. He still looks at me, like I am trying to posion him.

I cut down on my grocery bill and no longer let my husband do the shopping. Which saves us any where from $100-200 a month. We also cut down on cable TV. We got rid of HBO and the big package "deal" with the DVR and now we have basic and a netflix subscription, saving us $40 a month.

My husband is tired of his job and wants to find a new one, but he says this every year. He just has some issues he needs to stand his ground on.

That's my current life in a nutshell.

Baby Legs Winner

I have sent the winner (Francis) an e-mail. I will try to e-mail again. If there is no response by tomorrow night I will pick a new winner on Monday.

Weight Loss

So those ticker people lost my ticker or whatever...it disappeared.
So anyway...I think it started at 147 and my goal was 115lbs (cause I am short). Right now I am at 129 8 months after having a baby. I think my high during the pregnancy was 167.
My brother's wedding is in 2 months. I think it is reasonable to try to be 122-123 by then. I just hope the dress I have isn't too big if I get down to that weight... :D

Teaching a 2.5 year old to read?

My daughter has recently taken an interest in reading. She has known how to id all letters and letter sounds for the last 7 months or so. I think I am going to use a basic strategy. Start off with her sounding out "AT" and then adding different letters to the beginning of it. Then once we get that down I can start changing the end of the word to a different consonant. Then we can aim for really being able to read basic words and books this summer when she turns 3.
I have a feeling I am going to have my work cut out for me in a few more years...

Free

I saw this in one of the blogs on the left so I thought I would share.

Free scissors and free lip gloss (voucher to pick up at one of their stores, there is one in San Francisco, but none in Washington.)

Great Gifts

Z got this for a Christmas gift. She loves it. She is actually getting kind of good at the letters (for a 2.5 year old.) It is endless hours of dry erase fun. She works on it by herself and sometime we work together. For $6 you really can't go wrong.




Okay I just saw this and had to share. I don't eat fruit roll-ups but if you do thisis for you http://www.myfruitrollups.com/ This would be a fantastic birthday party favor, and $30 for 30 and free shipping using the code on their website...not too bad.

A trip to the allergist

Today was our second trip.
First trip it took one and a half hours for the doctor to look at my child's skin and do some online research while we were in the room. $200 billed to insurance.
Today we found out lil G has a latex allergy and I told her about the milk allergy incident. We did one shot (Prevnar) and then next time we do the Polio shot.
I got a prescription for one of those crazy pen shots that you use should Benedryl not be good enough. It is scary to think that I may have to use it someday, but I will not be afraid to use it should I need to. I also got a note to we can fly with it (since we fly a lot and have been known to eat airport food.)

I realized....I need to go back to my posts from 1 year ago...because the only things that have changed are our location, I have a handsome son now (vs. being pregnant), and instead of my husband's father being sick and worrying about him, we are now worried about my mom. The housing situation is exactly the same.

Give Away

I don't care for baby legs, but I got some for free when I ordered my last set of glamourmom nursing tops (which I no longer recommend because they switched to a lower quality fabric that piles.)

So here is the deal leave a comment (with your e-mail address, I will not publish it) between now and Saturday (Feb. 7th) and I will randomly pick a winner and mail try to mail them out in time for Valentines Day. I will not mail them outside of the U.S. , so my apologies to my international readers.

We are moving

So I just unpacked my husbands clothes a month ago. He needed winter clothes and he ever unpacked his self. A few things (decorative) never got unpacked.
Now our lease is up in a month and if we don't get out by then the rent goes up $400 or about 25%. Do we have a place lined up...no, but there is one potential. I wish the perfect house would come on the market, so this could be our last move for at least 5 years (or more) but I sure don't see the perfect house anywhere.

While I am on the topic. My husband likes multi level houses. I have no idea why, other than he says, "It is nice to separate the living and sleeping areas." He obviously doesn't spend enough time home alone with the kids. (Did I mention it is a 3 story town house with no gates on the stairs...yeah it gives me nightmares.) All the while he says this, he wants an office, which would likely be upstairs next to his nephew the teenager, and his loud music. If you ask me, it is really because he associates multi level with wealth and upper class in his home country (where there is no middle class.)

Now if only G will wait one more month before he gets good at crawling.

Why didn't I think of that...

A "Stay Dry Bath Apron." I am always afraid I am going to drop a squirmy baby while maneuvering around the bathroom. I always take off half my clothes before bathing the kids cause I always end up wet anyway. I am not sure if this is really what I need (I really need a rain suit), but it is a good idea and I could see how it would be really useful. Maybe I should make one for myself...

Just a note

Gibo played with his sisters sippy cup that had (cow's) milk in it. It is safe to say he is allergic to milk. I hope he out grows this in a year or less.

Coupons

I got my Kiwi Magazine and I have a lot o coupon codes to share. (I highly recommend the magazine for AP/Green mamas.)

Lavera Organic Skin Care 10% off with Kiwi09

SmartKnitKIDS Seemless Socks 10% off with KIWI

LoveBlessings.com Gift Baskets 10% off and free shipping with your first order KIWIBABE

Noli and Nali Skin Care 25% off your order with KIWI

Wee BE Organic Baby Cap 20% off with KIWI20

Green to Grow Gift Set 15% off with KIWIMAG

Sweet Pea Products 20 % off with KIWI

Child Safe Tee 10% off with KIWI

Lil Diaper Depot 10 % off first order till 2/28 with KIWI9

Dapple Baby Cleaning Products $5 off with KIWI

Happy Family Foods 15% off with KIWI109

Spa Princess Cookbook (all natural spa treatments and edible treats for kids) 15% off till 2/28

70-80% sure

that we will be taking in a before mentioned teenager this summer. His mom can't handle him and his younger siblings are tired of listening to him and his mother fight. My husband tells me it is because she never allowed him to grow up. You think??!!!?? At 15 years old he still likes to ride in the shopping carts at Costco and have someone push him (not fast and crazy like a teenager, but like we do my 2 year old.) He is more afraid of the dark than my two year old. I wish I was exaggerating. I am worried about having a teenager and his influence on my children, but I am hoping to nip a few things in the butt right away so I don't hear my 2 year old cussing.

We turned in the offer on the house yesterday. It was a low ball offer but I got an appraisal from an agent that had already seen the house and our offer was right on. However the owners said it was so low they weren't even willing to counter offer. (They obviously didn't see the news about 1400 people getting laid off 5 miles up the road yesterday.) So now the hunt continues. Looks like we will be moving out of here and into a 3 bedroom house even if we have to rent. I am excited about that part, but with the price of rent and the price of buying so close, I hope we find an even better house in the next 2 weeks.

Z not sleeping

In a previous post I blamed Zuzu's lack of good sleep habits on all of these weird changes and unusual events. Last night we found out the real culprit. The neighbor kid.

We live in a townhouse apartment. Apparently the neighbor kid (who is between 6 and 10) has his bed up against the shared wall. At night he moves around and his bed thumps the wall and wakes Zuzu up. This also explains why Zuzu would cry in the middle of the night and mumble something about noises and she loves to come into our room and sleep even if it means in G's crib.

My poor girl is being woke up 2-3 times a night by the neighbor kid....I am so ready for a house...sure there will be dogs, and parties and all kinds of other noises, but my guess is, it won't be every night.

With that said, we found a nice humble house that would meet our needs for the next 30 years. Could we throw a dinner party for 50 people in it...probably not, but we could in the backyard. :) Is it perfect, no, but it is as close to perfect as it gets without the house stretching our budget to the max (which is not something we want to do given the uncertain economic times.) Hopefully we will get an offer in that the sellers will approve of in the next week and we can all feel good. and if it doesn't work out...there will be a reason...and it may be another year before we learn that reason...