Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Today I wanted to go back in time, reach through my radio and...

punch a podcasting blogger in the face.

I was listening to a podcast from 2009 about un-schooling. Instead of talking about this, the guest went on and on about natural childbirth and visualization methods used in several methods she is certified to teach (Bir.thing from Within and I can't remember the other one, I haven't heard of it before). I was gritting my teeth to get through it so I could hear what I was listening for when she basically said if she hadn't been able to visualize her first birth as a natural birth, she might have had a c-section then she might have had formula fed babies and kids in public school! Apparently that is the worst thing in the world? She enrobed it in the "do what is right for you and your family" bullshit but apparently if her first birth had snowballed into surgery it would have been because she didn't try hard enough, then obviously breastfeeding wouldn't have been successful. Obviously if breastfeeding isn't successful, you didn't try hard enough, and parents who don't try enough send their kids to public school. She condescendingly mentioned that her clients who worry most about surgery/epi/induction end up with those things because that is what they visualized and they didn't want the natural birth badly enough.

Fuck her.

So, because I was a realist, my c-section was my fault. Good to know. I hate people who believe their hard work and "research" are what get them a natural birth. I firmly believe a ton of it is luck. Mich.elle D.uggar has had something like 5 c-sections. I am pretty sure her body was made to birth babies. Some people have easy births, some people have not so easy births, and some people need a little help. No one can "research" themselves into a 4 hour labor and delivery, no matter how much they would like to.

I guess I shouldn't be too angry. The woman had, IIRC, 2 so-so hospital births, a not so great homebirth, and a  great homebirth. The first homebirth was apparently ruined  by her lighting candles and listening to Enya. The great homebirth was because she was true to herself and listened to Meta.llica. Obviously she isn't too bright.

I don't think she ever got to the un.schooling I was listening for.

Friday, May 18, 2012

I think I might be a container hoarder

If this move has taught me anything, it is that I like containers. A bit too much. I use most of what I buy but do I NEED most of the containers? No. I could easily re-use a lot of what I have. I am going to challenge myself to stop buying bins and other containers, only using what I have for now. This will probably be tough...I came home with 4 new bins just the other day. Plus our new fridge is lilliputian compared to our old one so I am going to have to do a lot of labeled/stacked containerizing food. Yay.

Monday, May 14, 2012

The end of bedsharing

I never expected to love bedsharing, but Lila has been in our bed since day 1. I can count on one hand how many times she actually slept in her co-sleeper.

Well we moved on Saturday (2 days before her first birthday) and she is sleeping in her crib now. I thought the trasition would be hard. It was...on me! Somehow she is able to go to bed at 9 and wake up at 5:30-6 no interruptions at all. **I** must have been keeping her up all this time! She would eat a lot at night and this led me to believe that she would be up a lot while in her crib. WRONG! I know it has only been 2 days but she is doing great. I think she would probably sleep longer but I have to wake her up because I leave for work at 7.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

So very ready

We are moving on Saturday and holy Oprah I cannot wait to move. I am so ready to be out of here. It is going to cut so much time off of my driving, save gas, etc. Right now it takes me 35 minutes to get to work, about an hour to get home. I go pick up my son from daycare and it is pretty out of the way. Now they will be in the same daycare and the new place is 17 minutes from there. YAY! Their closet has turned out so nicely. It will be so nice to have somewhere to actually hang coats, dresses, and other stuff.

I am also very excited that we will have "nature" out there. We have a perfect bird-watchin' window. We have tons of storage and I will actually have my own little craft/sewing area. I am even taking my husbands desk, which happens to be my mom's old cutting table. I am very excited about this.


Thursday, April 26, 2012

It feels like it will never end

I need to finish my Masters degree. It is not something I have ever wanted, ever, but it is something required in my state. I have been enrolled in a summers-only program for the past 5 years. It is a 3 year program. To be fair, I have had 2 kids within that time. One summer I was hugely pregnant and my brain felt like it was misfiring at every turn. Last summer was out because I had a newborn. I have hated every second of the program, even though it is a high-quality school. It has cost me an arm and a leg. My undergrad has been completely paid off for about 3 years now, but I owe about $20k on this, not to mention the semester I paid cash for.

Here is what remains. Mind you, my degree is completely paid off, I just have to finish up these loose ends:

  • Write my Philosophy of Music Education
    • I took an incomplete in the class where this was required. I have written and re-written it but this has proven to be very difficult. They are big on "music for music's sake" there, but what is someone who is in constant fear of losing their job to do? Am I just supposed to write line upon line about how music is absolutely the most important subject of all time and people who don't think so are just morons?
  • Pass a comprehensive exam on early music history
    • I just really need to buckle down and study for this. My reading/learning comprehension skills have been very lacking in the past few years. I was recently diagnosed with CAPD, a learning disorder. It explains SO much about my struggles in HS and undergrad. I wish I had known 10 years ago. This test is on the Renaissance through the Baroque.
  • Pass a sight singing exam
    • Sight singing was my #1 weakness in undergrad. I can do it, and thankfully I have 3 tries. Mercifully they allow singing on "la" instead of requiring numbers or solfege.
  • Polish up my portfolio
    • Unlike most colleges, I have no thesis requirement. I have to have all of my graduate work bound together and explained in a large book that will be judged by my committee. This part is nearly complete and actually I like how it is turning out.  
  • Write and present on a topic relevent to my field.
    • This is a 20-30 minute presentation. I have no earthly clue what I want to write about, I have changed my subject about 15 times. Then the committee gets to grill me. I have to study everything I can about psychology of music, learning theories, current big-guns in the field, etc. Even thinking about this gives me hives and makes me kind of teary-eyed.
I just can't put this off anymore. I need it to keep my certification. My difficulty here is that I don't believe in a Masters requirement. I don't feel it is necessary. If we had moved to this state a year earlier, I wouldn't be in this mess. I want so badly to believe in it, but I just don't. Maybe it is because I am so scared. Whatever it is, I have to do it. My advisor isn't the most cooperative of people but he isn't a bad guy, so I know he will try and guide me to where I need to be (if I can get ahold of him!).

Monday, April 23, 2012

First snow day of the year!

Yes, here it is April 23 and we have had our first snow day. Usually we have plenty, but this year we had an unusually mild winter. Jack's school was closed, as was mine, so here are some pictures from our day today! (No, we didn't go out. Jack's snow pants have been packed and are moved to the new place already!)

This was while I still thought we were on a delay...Lila and I were playing with the sensory balls I bought her yesterday at TJMaxx. They are pretty neat, they are the spiky ones in the distance and right behind her. They came 4 to a box and are a hit with both kids so far!
 She looks concerned.
 Jack realized it was snowing. He said "It's Christmastime!".
 I got Jack some Cra.yola Window Crayons yesterday. He LOVES them. They are ridiculously easy to clean up. This was one of many of his artistic endeavors today. He would finish up and then say "clean please". A little club soda and an old prefold cloth diaper, the window was good as new. It came off the paint on the window sill and the kids hands quite easily as well.

I am working on scraping the scrapbook paper/ModPodge off of the dresser in Jack's room. This will go in their shared room in the new place (that I have been calling Green Acres...all we need is a pig!). It is made of metal and came out of a prison (literally...our landlord works at a prison and bought a ton of these dressers when they renovated). It will be lightly sanded, primed, and painted a sunshiny yellow. I will keep the current knobs (you can see them at the bottom). We use it as a changing table. There is a nook in the new bedroom especially sized for this dresser.
 Playing nicely with the Little People House.
 We made these pretzel bites today. When I cut it into 1/8 dough balls, Jack took one for his own. It kept him occupied for a good long time! He mixed it, kneaded it, cut it (with the bench scraper) and even made a few pretzel bites himself! He REALLY enjoyed this. I will definitely make it again, it was tasty and fun.

 Lila waiting patiently for some attention.
 I made a pizza!

Not all was sunshine and rainbows today though. Jack pooped 4 times before noon. He refuses to poop on the potty so that was fun. I was changing Jack and the phone rings. I go get it. I look at Lila who has gotten her diaper off and is now smeared in poop. That was fun too. Thankfully she didn't snack on its contents. It was our old family doctors office letting us know Lila was like, 8 months behind on appointments. Apparently they didn't notice that I transferred all of their records at the beginning of the school year. I brought Lila in for an appt. and they were 45 minutes late seeing me. I was there with both kids. This would have been fine, we really liked our doctor. What made this the straw that broke the camels back was that after the doctor saw us, it took ANOTHER 45 minutes for someone to come in and give her her shots. I was at the end of my everloving rope. I would have loved to tell them this today on the phone had Lila not painted herself. We have been super happy with our new office, they always see us very quickly.

Oh one more sunshiny rainbow: I made rice and split pea soup for lunch today. Jack gobbled it up. YAY Jack! 

Sunday, April 22, 2012

I just read probably the saddest blog ever

I was somehow linked to this blog today. I cannot stop thinking about that poor woman and what her husband and son must have gone through. I am having a hard time with this considering we are moving onto a property with a pond within the month. We have a friend whose daughter drowned in a neighbors pool and even thinking about going through what Amy did breaks my heart. Water safety is so important, I need to educate myself on it 110% more. I grew up in Florida where EVERYONE had a backyard pool. They were also fenced in. Here not always. And forget about the natural water sources.

There really isn't a point to this post but to kind of remind myself how important it is.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

It is all about the little changes

I am trying to make a lot of little changes in my eating instead of big ones, as those I usually fail at. 

I have kind of taken a bit of inspiration from my awesome friend Emily at QueenoftheKings. She has lost a lot of weight and is someone I look to for ideas when it comes to food intake. Every week she does a food prep post. The idea is right on, if you have healthy food at your fingertips, ready to eat, you will EAT IT. Tomorrow I am going to prep a week's worth of healthy food for my lunches, my husband's lunches, and dinners for my kids. 

My usual lunch at school involves soda and pizza, bought at the corner gas station. Always overpriced, always expensive. Sometimes some chips or chocolate are thrown in there. In interest of full disclosure, I often have breakfast pizza with a side of regular Sierra Mist while I am at it. Bad, bad, bad. 

Small changes for this week are: 
I bought medium sized tortillas instead of large. I also bought them in whole wheat. I got baby spinach to throw in my wrap with lean deli turkey breast, romanine lettuce, and hummus. I got a 6 pack of green peppers (it was DRASTICALLY cheaper to buy them this way). I will cut those up tomorrow and have them with my Panera Asian Salad Dressing, along with some baby carrots. I have a few diet shakes and a box of VitaTops to pack for breakfast this week, which I will eat with an apple. I have a cut up pineapple from last week and a big bag of oranges to serve as "dessert" with my lunch. Not the healthiest, but I have a few open bags of pita chips so I will be eating those with 1oz. of Wegman's colby jack cheese. That will be my snack. Once the pita chips are gone I will probably move on to pretzels (I have lots of open bags and am trying my best not to be wasteful). I will also be making a mix of white and brown basmati rice and kidney beans to have through the week. I will have a small portion of this with my lunch wrap. I have a few "naughty" goodies to work my way through, such as twizzlers, chocolate covered potato chips, but these will be worked through slowly. I will not be purchasing any soda this week at work, water only, with the occasional flavor packet. 

There! It feels good to have it written down, that way I can at least go back and read what I was thinking :-) 

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

More/Less

Eat more healthy foods/eat less junk

Exercise more/be a lazy ass less often

Read more/watch less TV

Go outside more/be less of a shut in



I need to be a better example of health for my kids. My daughter takes after me and I don't want her having the same issues I do. I don't want her feeling that she needs to go on a diet when she is 8. I want my son to learn how to make healthier choices for his own health. He is a skinny little peanut and will probably always be short but that doesn't mean he won't be overweight if he has a terrible example like me.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

A little surprise!

I went out on the porch today to find that my broccoli had sprouted! I only planted it about 5 days ago so this was a surprise. I bought trimmers this weekend so I am looking forward to pruning away the "loser" sprouts.

I don't eat broccoli, but my husband and daughter love the stuff. I am very disturbed by the fact that broccoli has worms in it. Little tiny broccoli caterpillar looking worms. Disgusting. Apparently they soak the stuff you buy in the store in a salt solution so it comes out before you ever see it. You can bet I will be soaking that stuff and making my husband be the one to skim the critters out of the water!

In about 3 weeks we will be able to put in our raised garden. We will also be purchasing a spinning compost bin from BJ's (lots of research went into this!) and a kitchen compost bin (I like this one from Oxo). Pretty much no matter what kind you buy they are $20-30. I just noticed that it says 1-3 months for shipping though! I might have to re-think, I like these ones too but they just are not as pretty.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Living in absolute chaos

I hate moving. It is turning my anxiety up to an 11. I am not a perfectionist at all but I really don't love EVERYTHING being out of place. I just don't even know where to start anymore! We painted the new place this past weekend. Hopefully painting will finish next weekend and maybe flooring soon. I have been trolling blogs like I Heart OrganizingLiterally Organized, and The Unclutterer to glean ideas on culling the clutter and giving everything a place to be. Our current place has 1 closet. Our new place has 8. This is SO exciting to me! I have to paint two of them and put shelves in two others, but they will give us the storage we so need. I have also been carefully reading House of Smiths. I just love Shelley's style! She kind of started my obsession with the quatrefoil pattern.  Our new place isn't the biggest or the fanciest (that is for sure!) but I will make it as organized and pretty as I can.

Here is a picture I took today of our porch

We probably have about 60 paper ream boxes out there. It never ends. The filled boxes are labeled and in every corner of our current apartment. 

In the background there you can see the seedlings that Jack and I started the other day.

 Tomatoes
 Lila helping by playing with her spinny toy on the high chair
 Tomatoes and green peppers!
We have decided to do raised beds for planting. This should be interesting! We are inheriting a Food Saver and we just bought a bigger deep freezer, so I will be freezing and canning every single thing I can. Fresh frozen veggies in the winter sounds fantastic!

Today was kind of awesome. I had a "give back" snow day off from work. We didn't use a single snow day this year, so they have to give us back the ones that were built into the calendar. We don't have a 5 day week at school until after spring break in April. Jack had school so Lila and I went to Target, TJMaxx, and Jillians Drawers. I made an absolute KILLING on Huggies Slip On Diapers, at 15 cents apiece. I love a deal! If Jack magically decides to poop on the potty tomorrow they don't go bad, so we can hold on to them for Lila. I also bought an excellent used Bum Genius FreeTime diaper, I hope we like it. We just sat around and relaxed (and packed) all afternoon until it was time to go get Jack. Here are some pictures of them from their dinner tonight. I am so thankful Lila is finally to a stage where I don't have to make 2 different kid dinners a night! Green beans and quesadillas for all.




Tuesday, March 13, 2012

And the world is new!

What do you do when you are laid off after 7 years at your job?

In my case, you become a stay at home mom. A job I never thought I would have.

I am not quite unemployed yet, I still have 12 weeks remaining on my contract. This is good. We are also moving very soon. We are hoarding as much money as we can in the next 12 weeks. The goal is for me to stay home for one (school) year, re-evaluate, and go from there, without burning through our savings. The two other teachers in my subject are very close to retirement so I could get called back anywhere within the next 1-3 years.

In order to keep some kind of structure over the summer, I plan on homeschooling-lite with my 3 year old son Jack. He has already started pre-K due to his speech delay. I have ordered a few supplies (all found on Pinterest, of course.) He will likely be in pre-K again next year since he only started halfway through this current school year. We do not want him in kindergarten at <4 years old either. While I am a qualified teacher with k-12 certification, I do not feel going whole-hog homeschooling would be a good idea in our situation. He gets speech therapy at school and has been thriving. He has only been in pre-K for 3.5 months and his expressive and receptive speech has exploded. Now if only he would poop on the potty, he could rule the world!

We also have an almost 10-month old daughter named Lila. She is sweet and wonderful and I could not have asked for a better baby. Jack adores her. Although I have actively discouraged it, she is a big time mover. My guess is that she will start walking within the next few weeks. She has incredible balance. With her, I have become a believer in extended breastfeeding. With #1, I had to heavily supplement and he was always a poor eater. Lila is not. She has never had to supplement and she is an excellent eater, I see no reason to stop nursing any time soon. While I don't plan on going until she is 3, I do plan on making it to at least 2. I will be drop-kicking all 3 of my pumps as soon as she turns 1 though! The idea of child-led weaning scares me just a bit, because the idea of nursing a 4 year old scares me. A lot.

When we finally move (onto a property with 17 acres) I plan on gardening, something I have never done. I also plan on composting, crafting more, refinishing furniture, getting out more to make some friends, sewing more, possibly learning how to knit, exploring nature with my kids (I am INCREDIBLY indoorsy, so this is a big deal for me), basically doing the finding myself that I never did as a 20-something. I literally have no hobbies. I would LOVE to get some. I just want to be passionate about something. I used to be passionate about music, but since that has been my job for so long, it has FELT like a job for a long time.