April’s got a blog

I REALLY REALLY REALLY miss my friend April. She helped me stay sane, sharing homeschool woes and triumphs, getting together at least weekly for our kids to play. We learned about spinning together, quilted, went on bike rides and adopted each other’s obsessions.

Then she moved to Seattle and I have felt like a fish out of water here without her and her kids to keep my kids company.

But now she’s got a blog, so at least I don’t just have to hear her description of her quilts over the phone and use my imagination, but I can actually see them (albeit small enough to fit on a computer monitor).

Here’s a quilt for her about to be born baby. She is amazningly talented. She’s an awesome knitter and made her own pattern for a rabbit, teddy bear, and clothes to dress them in.

Check out By Small Means regularly and you will be as happy to know April as I am.

I have survived (and new boots don’t hurt either)

Because I cannot for the life of me find the camera cable (which must be with Barry’s laptop in Reno) I needed some picture to post. So, here are my new boots, newly arrived from Zappos.com several days earlier than I had expected them. I have been searching for the right black shoes for years. My poor Simples (which they don’t make the same anymore, unfortunately) were purchased way back in the day Barry and I lived in our first basement apartment, just freshly married. I have tried to find something to replace them because they are in a sorry state, and quite uncomfortable to wear these days with the holes in the insoles and all, but I am very picky about shoes. They have to be the right shape, and the toe shape is the most important of all. They can’t be too skinny and make my small feet look silly at the bottom of a pair of properly shaped pants. Anyway, I guess people in Dayton just don’t have good shoe taste because there is ONE store in this entire metropolitan area that carries shoes I like. They did have a sale on Saturday, I went to look for something to spend my Christmas money on (thanks Mom) and almost settled for a pair of Dansko oxfords, but they were so tall and just not me. I have a favorite pair of shoes that I found at the Sierra Trading Post outlet in Cheyenne Wyoming (which is the ONLY thing that makes driving across Wyoming worth it) for $13. They’re Earth shoes and I wear them almost everyday. So I ventured to find another pair, balked at the price (especially after paying $13 for my first pair), but bit the bullet and typed my card number into Zappos.com. Great selection, free shipping, and I just order them on Saturday. They were well worth what I paid. New shoes always add a little twinkle to my eye. I remember sleeping all snuggled with my new Cabbage Patch Kid velcro sneakers, taking in that new shoe smell, for several nights as a little girl.

On the home front, I am surviving single motherhood so far. We’ve had good school 2 days in a row, made a visit to the library, took the dog and all 3 kids for a walk/ scooter/ bike ride quite successfully, listened to 4 CDs of Harry Potter 5, kept the house picked up, sorted, washed, dried, folded and put away laundry, and got everyone to bed on time without ANYONE crying or yelling. Oh, and today it rained, but I let everyone play outside anyway. The kids did a good job of keeping their muddiness outside, but Ellie was COVERED. She was so dejected by her filthiness and my attempts to wipe her off in the garage, that when I decided she just needed a bath I had to carry her upstairs because she wouldn’t budge. The dog bath went as smoothly as a dog bath could go, and no dinner got burnt. I will be very excited to get to run away to New York when Barry gets home though. This is exhausting. I would NEVER EVER want to be a single mom on a permanent basis EVER EVER EVER.

Patience anyone?

Barry is in Reno this week doing academic engineery things. (Oh, and skiing. A nearby mountain is giving free lift tickets to active duty military members.) Miracle of all miracles is that I got to 9 o’clock church, with 3 children dressed in clean clothes, on time! Though I tried to get the boys’ hairs into acceptable postition, it was in vain. But– not one of them had dried milk or snot anywhere on their faces!! Logan only ran up the aisle of the chapel once during Sacrament meeting, and though he is not officially 18 months until next Sunday, I got to leave him in the nursery while I sat through all of Sunday school. Ahhh… it was nice to sit and breathe.

Conducting Relief Society was like herding honking geese. The room was packed. The women were chatty. What do I do, shhhhhush them? 99.9% of them are 10 years older than me!! It was nice to feel the fellowship and friendship, but our poor teacher had a hard time keeping everyone’s attention. It was all very nice in the end. Church was good. Testimonies were shared, Sunday school was very inspiring and thought provoking, I left feeling good.

And all was well until bedtime. Barry does bedtime (except on Wednesdays). But he’s fresh and not quite as tired as I am by that time. He’s fun, but authoritative. Me– I just get bugged and mad because I am tired and I want everyone to go away already! In family prayer I even pleaded, “Heavenly Father, please help the kids to be nice and obey and help me to be patient and not cry or yell while we are getting ready for bed.” Well, I didn’t cry or yell. Nothing of note really happened or went wrong. But for some reason bed time just stresses me out with the undressing and the dressing and the teeth brushing and the VERY HYPER BABY and the one-last-drink of water and the going potty and the VERY HYPER BABY and the stories and the picking of stuffed animals to sleep with and making sure we have me-me’s (blankets) and the VERY HYPER BABY climbing on me while I’m reading the next story…

But Logan’s cute. He gets very hyper when he’s tired. Silly hyper, laughing and running and pulling the dog’s tail and climbing on siblings and on Mom’s head and pulling all toys out of their proper places hyper. He makes me tired. But when I put him to bed he tries to sing along as I rock him and “bap up” (wrap up). He lays his head on my left shoulder and sings in my ear.

So, I like that part.

Life is a Balancing Act

I’m tired. I’ve been quite a slacker in posting here–and in lots of other areas. I’ve been really bad about doing school every day, because I’m just not quite sure what to do. We’ve been doing first grade Saxon Math, which has worked pretty well so far because it is so gradual in adding concepts. Brenna is perfectly capable of every bit of it–and a little more. But, now we’ve reached a point where she has a worksheet of facts and the regular worksheet everyday, and it is just out of her 5 year old attention span to be able to enjoy. So, I’ve completely backed off on the math and structure and let her just read. But she has plenty of attention span for books. She’s been reading about 2 novels a week. This week she read Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz and Queen Zixxie of Ix, both by L. Frank Baum. Last week she read Ozma of Oz and one of the American Girl books. I guess I just feel guilty because it doesn’t take any effort on my part to plop her on a chair with a book and let her disappear into Oz for the rest of the the day. She’s got to be learning something, right? I shouldn’t be feeling bad that my 5 year old is reading at an 7th or 8th grade level, but just isn’t interested in 1st grade math.

So, I guess I’m just writing this to try to convince myself I’m doing okay, even though I’m not doing much. I have been spending a lot of time with church responsibilities. There have been lots of sugeries and babies born. There is one sister who has a 3 year old boy, a 2 year old boy, 16 month old twin girls, she’s pregnant due in April, and in the process of a divorce. I have no room to complain about being tired.

But I sure want too