Oscar Can't Get Any Love

Poor Oscar. He's been officially rejected. After being rejected by the bunny at the pet store he was going to possibly get a girlfriend from the Guardian Angels Shelter. But no girl will have him apparently. Soooo...I'll be picking him up. I've been reading through plans for building a bunny home for him as he's going to move up from the basement. Poor Gizmo is still hanging out in the basement. And now that there's no bunny to trade him for I guess the deal's off. So, we're going to have to try to get rid of him somehow. I know that sounds harsh, but with the daycare I don't have room for two separate bunny habitats in this house and they will not live together without killing one another. Gizmo is not getting quality care down in the basement...not to mention it's cold down there. It's really not a good place for him, but we have no choice right now. So in the basement he'll stay until we find a home for him. In the meantime, I'll add "build a bunny home" to my list of things to do. *sigh* I'm kind of excited though. I've found some great online instructions and pictures. This is going to stretch my crafting skills though. Hopefully I can get T to drill some holes for me though.

Boo and Santa

Well, Boo LOVES Santa. He loves to point him out in books, pics, etc... "Sinta" he calls him. Well, he LOVES Santa as long as Santa keeps his distance! We took him to the mall to see "Sinta" on December 23rd. And here was the result...


And actually, that's when we got him to not scream for all of two seconds! In his defense, this was quite a scary looking Santa Clause. He was thin and so the belly that he wore just made him look odd. His cheeks had a bit of a sunken in look to them. In fact, I would go so far as to say that they were a bit gaunt looking. He didn't speak or smile at Boo or make any other attempt to get Boo to be comfortable with him. I'm hoping next year they upgrade when they hire for Santa. Oh well...at least we have our Santa pic!

Out of the Funk, Boo's Vocabulary, and Getting into "Trouble"

Well, I'm out of my funk that I've been in - thank God. I don't know how many more days of that I could've dealt with. I think crafting last night cheered me up. I love scrapbooking and while I wasn't working on my own stuff, there's still something extremely rewarding about seeing a blank page and a picture turn into a masterpiece before your very eyes!

Boo is growing up so fast. I'm amazed by all of the things that he does. He's changing and learning new things. His vocabulary astounds me. He knows so many words. I'll try to write a current list, but I know that I'll miss many.

mama
daddy
doggy
duck
truck - "tuk"
more
milk
water - "awa"
I'm stuck - "I tuk"
cow
cot
diaper - "dapper"
Presley (his cousin) - "pessy"
Parker (his cousin)
feet
sock
shoe
thank you
baby Jesus - "batey Juwus"
Santa - "Sinta"
tree
baby - "batey"
snack - "nak"
night night
snow - "know"
outside - "utsigh"
upstairs - "ustairs"
downstairs - "destairs"
bye bye
book
hot
banana - "nana"
apple
Nathanial - "naniel"
Maddie - "mahee"
pizza
hat
music - "muni"
Crystal - "Kisstal"
grandma - "gammah"
papa
hello - "ehoh"
hi
potty
pee-eww (holds his nose while saying) - "peetu"
no
yes
push
cereal

Well, I know there's more, but that's all I can think of off of the top of my head.

Also, he's recently figured out how to get himself out of "trouble." When he's doing something that I don't like, usually "redecorating" the X-mas tree or standing on the coffee table, I usually get agitated after moving/ redirecting him for the fifth time in a row. He can see that a mile away. So what does he do then? He hugs me and gives me kisses. And he's got these beautiful angelic blue eyes. Good grief...I'm in trouble!

Crafting

Well, I have crafted my heart out and am now ready for bed. I wish I had some film...I would've taken pics of the things I created for my dc families. Earlier in the month I had the parents bring their childrens' Christmasy outfits. I changed them all into their outfits and took pics of them in front of my tree in a red radio flyer wagon. They turned out really great. The individual ones I scrapbooked on Christmasy paper with Christmasy accents and put in picture frames. The one that had all three of the kiddos together is on a handmade ornament that we made out of appetizer sized paper plates. It felt so good to create.

I absolutely love to scrapbook and never really get to do it. I want to make more time to scrapbook in the coming year. I'd really love to get going on Boo's book. Also, I found a cool idea in Creating Keepsakes magazine that I want to try. There's a project kit coming out in January that is entitled "Project 365". Basically, you take a picture for every day of the year and scrapbook it. The kit comes with pockets so that each two pages in your scrapbook is a week spread. It's not something where I'll be getting overly creative with layout as the pockets are there waiting to be filled, but I thought it would be great to work on my photography skills through the year and hopefully see some sort of progression by year's end. Also, it's a neat way to capture a year of life in detail. The creator of the kit has a little blurb about it on her blog.

Becky Higgins blog

Anyhoo, I'm excited to be done with the daycare kiddos gifts. I wanted to give the families cookies, but I don't see that happening. That means I would have to get them done tomorrow during the daycare day and I just don't see that happening. Oh well. I'll save the cookies for our family get together. I have to figure out what else I'm going to make though. Hmmm....oh well. I've got another day to think about that.

Weird Day Is Now a Weird Week

Okay, I'm officially having a weird week. I don't know what the deal is. Perhaps it's the weather and being cooped up inside. Perhaps it's the fact that I didn't get to go see friends in the burbs. Perhaps it's that I feel trapped in a life going nowhere. I don't know. All I do know is that I feel like complete crap. My mood is horribly depressive right now, especially for someone who usually really loves the Christmas season. I find that I feel a bit hopeless about everything right now, which is not my usual mode of feeling. And the fact that I feel hopeless causes me to feel guilty and ungrateful because I know that there are so many people in need not just of Christmas presents, but of basics like food and clean water. So knowing that makes me feel crappy for not feeling happy. Anyhoo, I think I'll stop writing before I bring others down with me.

Support Home Birth Midwives!

I'm just going to put a link to this post because it gives all of the necessary information.

Illinois Families for Midwifery Rally

I would LOVE to attend this. Does anyone want to commute with me?

Weird Day and Some Random Stuff

I've had a very weird day today and I can't quite put my finger on why. My emotions have been somewhat down all day. I think part of it is that there's so many things up in the air right now. I'm trying to get my daycare licensed. T is extending his army reserve contract. We're trying to figure out how to afford to live while he goes to school. I'm trying to figure out the rest of our Christmas shopping. I'm bummed because we were supposed to go to the burbs this weekend and go to a Christmas party and see friends. It's the one party I can count on every year to be there. It's sad and somewhat pathetic, but I've actually been looking forward to it all year. So it's a major letdown to not attend. I'm wondering how we'll ever get out of the rut of "going nowhere" that we're in.

On a positive note I got some knitting done today. I'm hoping to finish Boo's hat soon. Then I'll start on the two sets that I'm knitting for a friend's children.

Boo's language is just exploding. He says so many words that I can't keep up. I'm working on "Merry Christmas" with him. We have a couple of Christmas books and one tells the Christmas story. So I'm working on "baby Jesus" with him. I want so much for him to grasp the fact that Christmas is about Jesus' birth as opposed to rampant consumerism. It's hard to know how to get that point across when our culture is consumed with Christmas spending. It's easy to get caught up in it. Of course we plan to do Santa and all that with him too, but I want to somehow focus in on Jesus' birth as that's the part that's important to us as a family.

I Want a Vacation

I want a vacation. I want to go somewhere far away where it's warm and there's ocean. I want to watch Boo play in the waves. And I want to work on my tan - this means going from ultra pale to really pale - it's slightly darker. I want to go somewhere where the economy doesn't suck and my college degree is actually useful. I want to feel the sun in my face instead of freezing wind and I want to be surrounded by natural beauty instead of cornfields.

Honestly, I feel like T and I have lived in one place for too long. We're used to moving around more. It's a bit unnerving. Granted, we don't plan to stay where we're at. We long to go out west someday. I really like the idea of somewhere in Oregon personally. But we'll see. We are just trying to stick with our decision that we made - that T would be all done with nursing school before we move. Perhaps I'd feel better about that decision if we weren't still trying to figure out the financial logistics of him going to school. Ugh - it's been so frustrating and I'm so impatient - just wanting this to be done already.

I guess I'm looking for more than a vacation. I feel like we're getting stuck where we're at and it's not a good feeling. Hopefully we'll figure out how to get unstuck soon so we can get this show on the road.

A Post for Women!!

If you're a man this will probably be TMI, so consider yourself warned!

Last year I read the book "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" by Toni Weschler. It was an amazing read. It's crazy how many things about my body that I did not know! They don't get this detailed in sex ed. in school. This book talks a lot about the Fertility Awareness Method of birth control/conception, depending on the results you're wanting. Anyways, I couldn't really put it to use much as I didn't really have AF until very recently. The author includes a free software trial with the book. I downloaded the software and it really does make life easy, but the trial is only for 15 days and the software is $40 to purchase. Soooo I started asking around and looking around online and lo and behold I found what I needed for free.

Fertility Friend Website

The focus of this site is on conception as opposed to pregnancy prevention. I'm currently preventing, but it's still easy to apply the site for myself. Anyways, I just thought that anyone who uses the Fertility Awareness Method should be aware of this site. It's very easy to use. I'm sure tracking it by hand is easy once you get the hang of it, but I just didn't want to have to do that. And now I don't have to. I find it very easy to use. They also have tutorials on the site for those who want to learn about FAM. I haven't done the tutorials yet as the book I read was a very great introduction. But for someone not familiar with FAM and not wanting to buy Toni's book, I'm sure that this would be a great opportunity to learn for free. I do like the book because there's pictures that help to cement the learning. I don't know if the tutorial does this or not. I haven't bothered to look. At some point I may get around to skimming the tutorials at least. Anyways, enjoy!

Digging Deep

I need to dig deep for patience today. It seemed like every time I turned around my dc kiddo was either eating a bulb off the X-mas tree or some other such "no no". He definitely knows the rules...I think he's looking for some extra attention today. Soooo, I'm going to try to do something he enjoys, like playdough, after they get up from nap.

I also need to dig deep for some motivation as I'd much rather dork away on the computer for awhile then go back downstairs and finish the dishes, fold some laundry, put laundry away, and work on organizing the bedrooms. I just want our house to be clean and organized already. I'd love to just wiggle my nose and have it be done. Wouldn't that be wonderful???

New Blog

I have a new blog. It's about my weight loss journey that I'm embarking on. Here's the link:

Sexy By 30

"No"

Boo said the "N" word for the first time yesterday. I was corraling the kiddos into the kitchen for afternoon snack like I always do. And I told him, "Come on Boo. Come wash your hands." He looked at me and said "no" clear as a bell. Of course he then came to wash his hands. So the meaning is not there yet. But the word is!

PLEASE READ THIS BOOK

I finally finished reading "Biblical Parenting" by Crystal Lutton. I know I've already mentioned it here, but it's worth another mention. It's probably one of my favorite parenting books so far. And I've read a ton!!!

What I love about this book is that it's practical. I've noticed that some books/resources/etc...that discuss the disadvantages of punitive parenting methods tend to stop there. They don't provide parents with gentle alternatives. So I think that contributes sometimes to the mistaken belief that gentle parenting is permissive parenting. NOT THE SAME THING!!!

There is discussion about tools that a parent can use for discipline as well as what discipline truly means for children of different ages. I think she does a fantastic job of breaking it down.

Honestly, if I could get on my knees and beg people to read this book I would. I just think she does a great job of explaining the needs of children. It's not all-inclusive and I don't think that it's meant to be. I think it's meant to be a starting point, with parents continuing to look for tools that will help them to guide their children.

I have a copy and will gladly lend it out to anyone who wants to read it!

DISCLAIMER

This book is probably not for you if you're not interested in christianity or religion. While she does have a lot of practical things that would apply to parents of all beliefs, discussion of God and the Bible is woven throughout the text (hence the name Biblical Parenting). I'm guessing that may not appeal to someone who's not interested in the christian religion.

The Fire Marshall Is Coming

AHHHHH!!!! The fire marshall is coming here next week in order to assess the house for daycare. There is sooo much to be done. Much of the house is a mess - think clutter. I know from working in facilities that clutter is bad and too much of it is considered a fire hazard. Crap - we have a lot to do before next week and I'm not sure when we're going to get it done. I am sooo sooo sooo sick of this licensing process. I want it to be done already.

Oscar's Rejection

Well, I got a call from the owner of the local pet shop, where Oscar has been trying to build a relationship with a female bunny. Apparently he's been rejected. He must not be her type. Poor little thing - he's been rejected. Well, now the plan is for him to have another go at this bonding thing with a female bunny from Guardian - the local shelter for bunnies. So he's going to go to a foster home that has a couple of options for females and work on bonding with a different bunny. This way we'll still be able to make the swap with Gizmo. So hopefully this will pan out. We miss Oscar and want him to come home. And honestly we can't wait to get Gizmo out the door. I know that sounds harsh, but we're tired of being in limbo and ready to move on. I'm looking forward to getting the bunny space set up and having them be part of the family. I know the dc kiddos will love the bunnies also.

Poor Oscar. I hope he recovers from his rejection and finds the love of his life at this next stop.