Hello friends-
I do not intend to use my blog to whine or complain, but I do want my kids to know why their December has been scarce this year (when I get this published and they go back and read it). I do have stories to share, I do have pictures to post. But at the end of the day, I am dead-dog tired and out of energy. Most days (right now) I feel like I am running in circles and find myself running into myself before I can get to where I am going. Is it having 5 kids? I don't know. I do not want to blame it on that. I think that several things added to my life recently have just made life busy.
For example...
Cruz, my sweet angel baby, is a hard baby. He is the most cuddly and loving child I have had so far, but has had more issues than the other combined. With his food allergies, his tummy issues, not sleeping through the night, and now the poor boy just cannot poop without a crazy amount of effort and screaming (Dyschezia).
Because of him, I have now been dairy and nut free for almost 5 months. Where it is really no big deal to me, to my family it is hard. Do you know how many recipes call for dairy? Do you know how much cheese we consume? I now know that pretty much every meal my kids eat has dairy in it somewhere. It has not been hard on me to give it up, I can substitute easily, but when it comes to making things that 4 kiddos will eat, we are running slim on recipes.
Speaking of recipes, I also have started to become a "coupon-er". Yes, I used them if I had them before, but now I am on a mission to save money for this family and see how well we can do on decreasing our grocery bill. I am still in the learning curve, and it is about to send me to the loony bin. Last night my Publi* trip took 2 hours (kid free), and I left feeling like my mission was not complete. You get this feeling of dread when you purchase things NOT on sale and WITHOUT a coupon. Like you have failed as a coupon-er in training. My coupon buddy, SM, and I keep talking and encouraging each other. But when you don't know that the little yellow stickers they put up at the local grocery are not really a good "sale" price... life is bliss, once you KNOW... it is hard to buy it unless it is the lowest price.
Couponing has lead me to making my own baby food. Why you ask? Because STINKIN' baby food is 97 cents a jar... that is why. With a coupon, I can buy a bag of frozen green beans for 50 cents and make 15 servings of green beans. Or buy a Butternut Squash for $1 roast it and have 20 servings. So, my blender and freezer has been in high gear.
And then there is Eliza. FINALLY yesterday we met with the Speech Pathologist from the local school system and (4 meetings, a hearing test, an ear cleaning, and an observation later)she qualifies for Speech/Language Therapy, which she begins on Friday... during nap time. But I cannot complain, someone finally listened to me and for over a year now I have been trying to get her some sort of services. I feel like as an educator I should be able to help her, but nothing seems to be working on my end.
Which was why I was working with my Preschoolers on fun Tot stuff (like my Tot Tools and learning stuff). I have several pictures and activities from that I have not gotten on here yet. We try to sit down a few times a week and have some sort of "school" for Eliza and Silas. We work on typical preschool stuff, but we make it fun. However, no matter what I do Silas refuses to learn any letters. We have glued and glittered, cut and colored, painted and pasted, and he is clueless about his letters. I don't know if being a lefty is playing into this at all. But today alone he wanted me to print out a B@tman page for him to color. I told him that in order to earn a B@tman page, he had to work on his letter B. So we traced and wrote the letter B about 20 times. We then went and stamped the letter B on our hands. We found things that started with the letter B and I read a book with lots of B's and B...B...Buh-ed my way through the entire thing. 5 minutes later, I showed him a picture of the letter B... his response... "a J?". WHERE HAVE I GONE WRONG???
This is all just the tip of the ice berg. I am currently keeping running records right on my computer desk of all the information I need on our SS Class, my job as room mom for Callan's class, my purchased Christmas gifts, my calls into the Dr's office for Eliza and Baylor, and Baylor's school project that is due tomorrow and no where near done on a book that was probably not appropriate because he is reading on a 6th grade level.
Did I mention that my husband and son are leaving the country in 5 days and as a momma, I am trying to think of everything he might ever need... but instead am downloading books and songs to his iPod because I can listen to it here too and feel connected to him while he is gone.
Like I said, I have too many irons in the fire and not enough time to blog and a Matilda Jane outfit is just about to run out of bidding time over on e-bay... better run!
