Monthly Archives: January 2013

A Big Mess Turns into Great Teaching Tool

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Having set up our diapering drawers for 3 in diapers has also created a fun place for my toddlers to play.  Unfortunately it also means a HUGE mess in my living room!  I could totally let this mess get to me and get super frustrated but instead I use it as a way to spend time with them and teach at the same time.

The little ones seem to really enjoy throwing the entire contents at each other and into the air like confetti.  I have decided that if it gives them great pleasure to do it, I won’t stop it.  Instead I use the cleanup as a great teaching tool that requires no cost.  Cleanup consists of a couple of different tasks.  Sometimes I simply have the boys picking up each diaper I ask for.  This teaches them to listen and respond to each request given by mom.  Other times we sort into piles and then put the diapers away.  This of course teaches sorting.  Lately I have been asking for patterns.  So they will bring me diaper A, then diaper B, and then diaper A again and so on.   We also stack in the drawers so that the diapers are facing same way which helps them with motor skills and recognition.

The boys enjoy sorting very much… I think too much right now but I know it will be short lived.  At some point they will grow tired of having to clean it up and will hopefully no longer empty the drawers.

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I Need vs. I want

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One key way to ensure a successful budget:

Recognize there is a difference between “I need” and “I want”. Stop, make a list of your needs and wants. Then go back and review your “needs”, are they really “needs” or just “wants” disguised as “needs” by our emotions?

For example

I need that new $20,000 car because mine broke down.  No I want that $20,000 car and my broken down one is an excuse to overspend.  Yes, I need a new car but one that fits in my budget not one that I fell in love with the minute I saw it 🙂  Taking out the emotion and recognizing what is a need and what is a want will help ensure successful budgeting.

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4 years later…

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Today is one of those days where I want to share and yet don’t exactly know what to share.  A part of me is excited to remember the blessings Clara’s birth brought, the fun times we shared.  The other part of me is sad because of the future we didn’t get to share.  A part of me is sad that my 7yr old says his life will never be the same without his sister.  Yet another part is sad because of things we continue to struggle with today.

4 years ago today we were anticipating Clara’s birth.  We had no idea our “snails and puppy dog tails” home would be filled with “sugar and spice”.  My husband was writing in her baby book about the presidential inauguration that happened the day before.  She was going to be part of a something big 🙂  Today we watch as that same president is sworn into office again but this time without her.   She was also the light in the middle of sadness from my brother’s death.  Born just 21 days after he took his life, I was sad that it would be a long time before she would meet him…or so I thought.  She brought a twinkle of happiness to the sadness that had filled my family.  We had no idea Clara would be 1 of the 80 babies that don’t make it to their 1st birthday every year in South Dakota and yet I am thankful we didn’t know.

I often struggle with the whirlwind of things that happened after her birth and some that continue today.

Today I can’t help but wonder how life would be different if Clara were still here.  Would Lincoln and Preston be here, would my marriage still be intact, would I have met some of the wonderful ladies I have met along the way, would I have learned to speak up, what would it be like to have a little girl running around??  I don’t know.  Today is one of those special days where I can dream about her and what things would be like.  Today I can be sad and happy and very few will judge me for it.  I won’t have a preschooler next year  but I do have a memory full of happy times I did get to share with her.  Those happy times make today a day I can get through.

Wishing a Happy 4th birthday in Heaven this week to Clara, Eli, and Bria.

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Guns and a Facebook Message

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With guns being the hot topic these days, I thought I would add my opinion as a gun owner and a parent.  Facebook probably isn’t the best medium for it but it is nice to hear the feedback from friends and family on the issue.  I think most of the time I get a well rounded set of opinions.  That said I also got a few private messages from friends stating their opinions as well.  Most of them I understand where they are coming from and respect them for it.

 I had one individual who was very upset with my view point and thus sent me a “helpful” message that stated…

“You are crazy!  I can guarantee you that the day the government or anyone else with a gun comes to your house and kills you and your family, I will be laughing.  You are stupid to believe that killing should be the last resort.  If you enter my home I will kill you, whether you have a gun or not.  I will make sure to stop by your grave and laugh at how well your god protected you.  God won’t protect you and you are stupid if you believe that.  He didn’t protect your daughter, isn’t she buried in the ground already?  I will protect my family at all costs but if you support gun restrictions I promise you, I won’t protect yours and neither will your god.”

To that I simply replied…

“I am not asking you to protect my family.  I was taught that killing someone is wrong and it is an absolute last resort.  Hopefully I will never need a gun to protect my family.  As for my God protecting me and my family.  Yes He will.  It may not be the way my mind would want Him to but He always does.  God didn’t “save” my child to live another day in this messed up world but He did save her from the depths of Hell and she is safe in His arms.  That kind of protection is more than I could have asked for.  He will do the same for me, my husband, my children, and all of His believers.  That said, I am afraid I wouldn’t want you and your guns protection.  I will however lock my doors out of fear that people like you own guns.”

And people wonder why there is so much fear…

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Rationalizing the Unthinkable

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After seeing the video that is circulating friends pages on Facebook about Sandy Hook, I am greatly angered. I have spent time asking myself why it angers me so. First, I have to remind myself that this is someones ill attempt at trying to explain something they simply can’t understand. The situation at Sandy Hook is so hard to comprehend. What makes someone do this? For many the gun talks that have come from this tragedy only can result in only one thing….conspiracy. We have dealt with this before. After 9/11 there were many who couldn’t believe something like that could happen and they did their best to come up with a “rational” way to understand. For some, humans will do whatever they can to find a way to explain, rationalize, and understand what has happened without concern for those they may hurt.

This brings me to the reason it hits home so much for me. After Clara passed, I spent many hours and days trying to find answers.  SIDS or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was not something I truly understood at the time.  In my searching I found many websites, Facebook sites, and blogs that were nothing but peoples attempts to understand or explain SIDS.  Many sites said SIDS was nothing more than a parents way of getting off with killing their babies.  Another one I read was about how the government was experimenting on our children through vaccinations (which is why they track lot numbers) and see how many die.  These types of sites are not helpful to any grieving parent nor do they provide the public with good information so they can support others when a child is lost.  They simply create judgements of parents and families.

When we look into Sandy Hook  – Just because those families “didn’t get to view” their child doesn’t mean their child didn’t die.  Just because the autopsy of each individual hasn’t been released doesn’t mean they didn’t die…the physical body autopsy may be complete but often any blood tests or such can take weeks to come back.  It took 45 days to get the full report for Clara.  Just because there is no surveillance video released doesn’t mean they are doctoring it, maybe it means they are giving these families privacy from having to watch the horror their children saw.  Maybe they are trying to honor our wishes to stop sensationalizing these terrible tragedies in the media.

As for the craziness to the reporting and how things were always changing… Stop and think about how quickly the rumor mill in your town hits and how varied stories can be when there is a terrible accident or a suspicious death.  I can tell you that some of the things I heard about how Clara died were so off the wall and yet mixed with some very correct info.  It happens.

So before you share that video you should ask yourself…am I helping those families that lost their children or am I spreading rumors.

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Stripes in the Laundry Room

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One of my long time items on my project list has been to paint our laundry room.  We have lived in our home for 4 years and that room, and a few others, still has the original flat primer it was built with.  So after too much time on Pinterest I found my idea…stripes.  So after I completed the base satin finish paint I moved on to taping.

Taping the lines

I would be lying if I said this was the fun part.  I decided on a smaller 4 inch stripe.  This meant a lot of measuring and  lot of tape.  This was the progress I made in about 30 minutes.  Thank goodness it is a small room.

Mommy’s Helpers

 

That’s right, Mommy has 2 little helpers.  I went off to look to the intertubes for advice on taping only to return to a closed laundry room door.  To my horror my 18m old and 33m old had removed the tape and even drew me a few lines.  While my husband thought it was hilarious I thought about crying.  The little ones said, “We are helping Mommy.  Pres is doing tape and I am making lines.”  So cute!

Painting

Painting was the easy part.  I was smart this time and waited for the kids to go to bed which meant for continuous, distraction free painting.  Once the painting was complete I requested the help of my husband to remove the tape before the paint dried.

The finished product

I finally got to hang up my Mother’s Day gift!  I love this phrase because in a home full of kids…it is so true!!!  I think once the paint has dried I will hang up a little clothes line under the quote, add some clothes pins, and a few things.  I was thinking maybe a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee, a sock or 2, and a stained up baby shirt.

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Diapers: Cloth vs. Disposable

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As we prepare for our sixth child we are face with the ever growing diaper bill.  This baby will bring us to 3 under 3yrs.  We also face the ongoing issues with our 33 month old’s bladder and the unknown time frame for potty training and bladder training.   At any rate we budget $80 for diapers every month and a newborn is almost certain to double that figure!  We had tried a few “generic” brands but never seemed to like any of them to the point where were would want to use them full time.

My husband’s brother and sister-in-law suggested cloth.  In my head cloth were messy, hard to put on, and something I had to clean.  I let her do the testing 🙂  Thanks Julie!!  gDiapers was the brand they went with.  6 months later, here I am buying them to try out on the little boys.  Well…first I had to convince my husband of the initial investment cost.  Once we sat down with the numbers (he is a numbers and figures guy, it must fit the budget) it was decided to cancel our Amazon subscribe and save and order our first set of gDiapers.  For the sake of my husband’s sanity, and mine, I decided to order 3 of the same color for each boy.  It worked perfect since the medium started pack comes with 6 shells, 3 orange and 3 green.  I quickly found out medium wasn’t quite big enough for one of the boys.  So order more I did.  This time 3 red large ones.

The little boys LOVE them.  They actually aren’t nearly as much work to clean.  I mean, what is 3 more load of laundry a week in a home of 6?!?!  Right now I have enough inserts to wash every other day which isn’t bad at all.  My 33 month old throws fits when we have appointments where we need him to wear a disposable one.  My 18 month old really isn’t too picky about which one he wears but is starting to show preference to the gDiapers as well.  Someday I will try to use them while out but for now it is nice to use disposable especially for appointments when you don’t know how long you might be out.

We love them because after 6 weeks, I still haven’t bought diapers and won’t for at least another 60 days.  We still use disposable at night.  Little boy bladders are just too much for the cloth kind, even when cloth liners are doubled up.  I am okay with that.

As we go into the last few weeks before baby we have begun to rearrange our diaper stash and storage at home.  Baby #6 will be in disposable for a short time until they are big enough for small gDiapers and then the savings can really begin 🙂

Diapers for 3

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Operation Take Back the Basement

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Since I began staying home full time I have found clutter to be my worst enemy.  Pregnancy also has a way with making me get project happy.  Of course Christmas came and although this year didn’t include the insane number of gifts it has in the past, it did bring new, exciting toys that need to be put away.  So this weeks project included cleaning, sorting, pitching, donating, and selling old toys to make room for the new, cool ones.

This was the organization that started 6 years ago in my apartment, when we had just 2 little boys, and has never really been revised.  A couple of bins and those plastic 3 drawer carts were perfect.  The kids could easily see what was in the drawer and with pictures on the front ideally they would put the toys back in the correct drawer.  Yeah right!  As our boys have grown and more have been born I have recognized the need to revamp my approach.  Another reason to change… the is a bigger selection of toys.  No longer is it just Lego’s and Transformers, but a collection of 2 different size Lego’s, 2 different difficultly levels of Transformers, balls, action figures, baby toys, superhero costumes, ect.

As the years have passed the older boys have used and abused many of their toys as well.  Transformers are NOT made like they were 20yrs ago.  These piles of plastic break with every bend.  Granted, many times legs can be snapped back on but after the kids have asked dozens of times in an hour for you to fix them, they often just quit playing with it.  This creates a fun game of match the piece to the transformer.  I call it an expensive puzzle that usually doesn’t get solved.  In this cleanup alone I have half of an 18gal tote of broken transformers and their pieces waiting for Dad and boys to match.  I would love to dd them to the “toys I won’t purchase”  list but my husband and boys would be upset.

After seeing a friends “cubby” system and finding something similar on Pinterst, I decided to go with that.  My biggest idea came when I decided to build my own.  Okay so I have big plans, little budget, little time, and a pregnant belly.  After careful thought and crunching numbers it was decided it was less money, time, and hassle to buy the preboxed kind from Menards.  I apparently picked the right week to do this project too.  Menards had the shelving on sale as well as the fabric bins which meant no searching for the correct sized bin to fit the cubby.

Anyway… so the finished project looks great!

The little boys love it.  They have already dumped out a bin or 2 but cleanup is so much easier, I think anyway.  I got the pleasure of pitching 2 garbage bags of junk into the garbage and 2 bags for donation.  The corner where all the totes were is now a place for the TaeKwonDo bag where hopefully no one will get hurt.  Nevermind I have 4 boys, someone will get hurt it is just a matter of when…right?!?!

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