reanbean

Short on Time

I’m not really sure why I thought I’d have any time at all to relax this summer and attempt to make a dent in the booklist I put together for summer reading. T’s last day of teaching was June 22nd, and having two parents home should make life easier, right? In theory, I suppose.

The thing is, T (who is our major bread winner since I took a leave of absence in 2008 and then resigned just this past winter) doesn’t get paid through the summer months. We go ten weeks every summer (well, every summer since 2008) without any steady income. When we had two incomes, it was no big deal. We’d put more than enough money aside and coast comfortably through the summer months without a care in the world. But a family of 4 living on a public school teacher’s salary is hard enough, and there’s rarely anything left over to be put away once our mortgage and bills are taken care of. Still, we’re pretty frugal and always manage to make it through.

But a big part of our summer survival is my tutoring side gig. During the school year, I only tutor about 5 hours a week. But in the summer I have to take on as many requests as I get, because it’s crucial to our survival. Fortunately (and unfortunately), I’ve had more than enough requests for tutoring sessions this summer. It’s great to not have to worry about income, but I’m nonstop busy all day long. And when I’m not tutoring, I’m planning lessons. Every kid’s lesson is individually tailored to his/her needs, so it takes a fair amount of planning- including time logged in at the Staples copy center and time spent reading my student’s summer reading books- to make it all go smoothly.

And, of course, I’ve not given up much of my mommy role. I’m too invested, and don’t want my kids to miss out on playdates or storytimes if I can help it. Plus I’m still making it to the gym 3-5 times per week, which means, at the end of the day, there really hasn’t been much time to relax even if I’d wanted to.

Still, I’m enjoying the summer, now having gotten used to the craziness of it, and Tiny and Buba are really enjoying the extra time with their daddy. T and I have our anniversary coming up next month, and family coming to town in July and August. There will be fun at the fair, picnics in the park, and time at the pool in the not too distant future. So I’ll definitely schedule in some down time… for September.

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Update on Tiny: Thanks for all the well wishes. We went to see the pediatrician on Tuesday, and he said her cut was healing just fine. We have to change her band aid 2-3 times per day, which she is not fond of, and the hardest part is trying to keep it clean while still allowing her to have some outdoor fun. Hopefully by early next week, it will have scabbed and we can remove the band aids from the equation. She’ll definitely have a scar, but it should fade over time.

Snippets

I’m finally feeling back to my old self again. Finally. I’ve taken all the meds (7 days of eye drops, 10 days of antibiotics, and couch medicine and inhaler as needed), and the sore throat and cough are finally gone. Without the cough, I should be sleeping soundly through the night again, but alas, the night wakings continue (more on that later). I haven’t been to the gym in two weeks (since the sickness kicked in), but I’m planning to make my grand re-entrance tonight. I’d been back to going 4-5 nights a week since the end of March, and as of May 21st, I was up to 226.9 miles on my 500 miles in 2010 goal. I suppose I’ll need to ease back into my workouts, but hopefully in a week or so, I’ll be back on track again.

Today was week 5 of drop-off playgroup for Buba and Tiny. We didn’t have playgroup last Monday due to the holiday, but I did leave the kids at childcare when I went to book club on Friday. They both did fine there for almost 90 minutes, so I decided it was time to try leaving for a bit during playgroup today. We arrived about 5 minutes late, and both kids walked right in and started in with activities. I talked briefly with the teachers about my plans to leave and what to do to help soothe Buba should he be upset about my absence. My understanding is that he was fine until he got spooked by some loud noises in the music area, and that’s when Buba lost it. But still, I got to spend almost 30 minutes down in the waiting room by myself before needing to return to take my place at the mommy bench. And that seems like huge progress to me. Plus, Buba was totally fine with going to circle time and snack time this week. Yes, I still had to accompany him, but he didn’t cry as he had during previous weeks.

Buba is still wearing undies during the day. He is now telling me when he has to go, or will just go to the potty in our house and go all by himself. He has very few pee accidents and no poop accidents. However, he still will only poop in a diaper at nap and/or nighttime. I’ve tried enticing him with a reward and putting him on the potty right before nap and nighttime, but still no successes in that department. Maybe by the end of summer, I hope…

Tiny continues to wake at night on a fairly regular basis (maybe 4-5 nights a week). At first I thought is was bad dreams, then I thought it was out of need to use the potty. I am no longer convinced that it is either of these things. T and I have been taking turns going in to soothe them (because inevitably, Buba always wakes up too), and it usually just takes a minute or two, but the fragmented sleep definitely isn’t good for any of us. I’ve begun reading the months 22-36 section in the Weissbluth sleep book, and we may try to implement some of the strategies in there. This week I’ll just be collecting data so I know for sure exactly how often the night wakings are occurring.

I’m way, way behind on my blog reading again (especially on those with daily or multiple posts each week), but I hope to catch up soon. Many thanks to Mandy from My Life as Described by Twin Trials and Triumphs for passing on the Trendy Blog Award. We’ve recently bonded through our only-child-all-grown-up-and-now-raising-twins connection and have enjoyed swapping book and CD titles. If you haven’t already checked out her site, you definitely should!

On the Mend

Thanks for all the well wishes. I am finally beginning to feel healthy again, although it may take a bit longer for my voice to recover.

T took Buba and Tiny to his parents’ house both Saturday and Sunday so I could rest in peace and quiet at home. I stayed in bed almost the whole time- reading blogs, watching Nexflix, and taking naps- and got up only to take my meds (antibiotic, eye drops, and cough syrup) and use the bathroom. It sort of felt like bedrest all over again, although with much different discomforts. By Monday morning I could tell I was beginning to feel better, but I was still coughing quite a bit.

Yesterday was my first day on my own with Tiny and Buba, and it was also the first day that I could go more than 15 minutes without coughing. We ran a quick errand in the morning, and then the kids played outside for over an hour while I sat in the shade and tried not to fall asleep. When nap time came, I took a nap as well.

The toughest part about me being sick has been getting rid of my cough. The cough keeps me from falling asleep and also wakes me up in the middle of the night. Fortunately, each day I’ve been coughing less and less, and I hope by the end of the week, the cough will be completely gone.

Being sick these last few days has made me realize that I probably need some sort of back-up plan for when/if this ever happens again. What do SAHM’s do when they get sick, but still have healthy, energetic kids to care for? Perhaps I need to start a temp agency that sends out substitute mommies in these types of situations. Or maybe such a business already exists.

Sick Days

Back in the days when I was teaching in a nearby public school, I used to get 14 sick days at the start of each school year. I could use them to stay home on days that I was too sick to be in school or for days when I needed to go to a doctor appointment. I could request an entire sick day or just a half sick day, and any days not used by the end of the school year would rollover into the next year.

It was nice to know that if I had to be out sick, I could take a sick day and not have to give up a day’s worth of wages, but I rarely ever used them. Because the downside of taking a sick day is having to write up a sub plan, wherein you must spell out in great detail what is to be done in your classroom all day long. And then I would have to get all the materials in order so the substitute would have everything needed to teach all the day’s lessons. Honestly, it was usually a whole lot easier to show up and do the best I could than to call in sick.

But this past week, I would have given anything to have been able to call in sick to my SAHM gig. I thought I just had a cold, but man, did I feel awful and completely wiped out. My head was pounding, my nose was either completely stuffed up or running like a faucet, I was barking like seal, and my throat was so sore that I was trying to get by on a yogurt/ice cream diet along with cup after cup of hot tea. As the week went on, the coughing got worse and worse, to the point where I was unable to get a decent amount of sleep. I was pretty miserable, but thought I just needed to let the cold run its course until Friday morning when I woke up with my eyes glued shut with yellow/green gunk. At that point I knew that I needed to get to the doctor’s office.

And it was a good thing that I went, because it turns out that I have an upper respiratory infection, an ear infection, conjunctivitis, and a cough that requires full-strength prescription cough syrup. I left the doctors office with four prescriptions and orders to “take it easy” for a couple of days. Ha! No chance of that happening yesterday with two toddlers to care for.

So today, I called in sick. T agreed that the only way for me to really get some rest was for the kids to be out of the house. So Tiny and Buba are off visiting Grammy and Grandpa, and I am home in bed. Resting. And while it’s not the sort of “me time” I’ve been hoping for, so far it feels really good to just lay around and do nothing. I suppose I’ll catch up on blogs, watch a little Hulu, and do a some reading for bookclub, but it’s nice to know that I can just lay back and close my eyes anytime I want to. And hopefully, with T taking charge of the kiddos all weekend, by Monday, I’ll be as good as new.

I Singing

Buba loves, loves, LOVES to sing. He sings mostly nursery rhymes, but every now and then, he puts new words to a familiar tune to get his point across…

To the tune of Frere Jacques after eating a free cookie from the bakery at the grocery store:

I lika mo cookie, I lika mo cookie

I lika mo, I lika mo

Mo cookie mo cookie, Mo cookie mo cookie

I lika mo, I lika mo

At first it surprised me that he would do something like this, but when I really thought about it, it made sense, because it’s something I do (and have done) for a long time. And I seem to do it more with Buba than with Tiny. When he’s really upset, this song can usually calm him down. Think of the song I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad, and skip ahead to the “Fee, fie, fiddle-e-i-o” part. That’s the tune these lyrics go with:

Bye-bye, Mr. Cry

Bye-bye, Mr. Cry-y-y-y

Bye-bye, Mr. Cry

Bye-bye, Mr. Cry. Bye-bye!

Both Tiny and Buba know these made-up lyrics well, and will even sing them to each other when one of them is upset. But Buba is the one who seems to have really caught on to the idea that you can set any words to music, and he’s really taken off with it lately. And weather it’s This Old Man or Booger Booger Booger Boog (sung to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star), when Buba announces, “I singing!” I know it’s going to be worth my while to take a few minutes to listen. I could just listen to his sweet, little voice all day long.

Don’t Say Don’t

I’m sure you’ve heard this before. That those of us who live with young children should avoid saying the word don’t. Instead of saying what not to do, we should be telling our kids what they should do. So, we say things like, “hands off” instead of “don’t touch”. But do you know why this way of communication is recommended?

Last Wednesday, I went to a parenting workshop on Positive Discipline, and the presenter gave a very good reason why we should avoid the word don’t. She, like me, had always thought that it was just better, more positive, to tell a young child what he should do instead of what he shouldn’t. But then she read a study (not listed in her handouts, and I cannot remember who she cited) that concluded that young children actually don’t hear the word don’t. So when we say, “don’t touch” they hear “touch”. That being the case, it’s no wonder that they do exactly what we’ve just said not to.

Sitting in the workshop, I noted this bit of information as interesting, but didn’t think much about it until a few days later when I was coaching Buba on what to say to get Tiny to stop messing with him. It went something like this:

Me: Buba, if you don’t like what Tiny is doing you have to say, “No! No!”

Buba: No! No!

Me: Tell her, “I don’t like it!”

Buba: I like it!

Me: No, say, “I don’t like it!”

Buba: I like it!

And that’s when that bit from the workshop really clicked for me. I wish I could find that study (perhaps a Google search will turn up something), because I’m so curious to know how it was conducted and how old the subjects were. But for now, I’ve been trying to avoid the “don’t commands” as much as I can. It’s a bit harder than I thought it would be, as saying don’t seems to come more naturally, and of course, is a much faster way to say what I want to say. But I’ll keep trying, because it seems to be working a bit better.

A Few Good Books

If you visit this blog regularly, you probably already know that I used to be an elementary teacher. Over eight years of teaching, I taught grades one, three, and four, and I am currently tutoring students in grades two, five, and six. But what you may not know is that I am also a licensed reading specialist. I love teaching kids to read, love reading children’s books, and do everything I can to pass on a love of reading to all the children I work with.

So it tickles me to no end to see how much my own kids love books. We have certain times during the day when we almost always sit down and read books together (first thing in the morning, before nap, after dinner, before bed), and it isn’t uncommon for Tiny or Buba to bring T or me a book at some other point in the day and request that we read to them. For a long time, they both have enjoyed looking at books on their own, and just recently, they’ve begun to read aloud some of their favorites to themselves or to each other. Books like Good Night, Gorilla, Baby Bear, Baby Bear What Do You See?, and Pajama Time are among the many that Buba and Tiny have heard so many times that they feel confident telling the story on their own.

We literally have hundreds of children’s books in our house (T teaches elementary students too, so we get tons of bookstore gift cards), and we try to rotate around the ones we have out in book boxes every few weeks. Current favorites include Miss Spider’s ABC, Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?, and Hey! Wake Up! But a brand new favorite that we’re all enjoying is called Little Blue Truck. For those who don’t know this one (I certainly didn’t until a couple of weeks ago), it’s about a very friendly little blue truck who beeps hello to all the animals he passes going down the road. Then along comes the big, unfriendly dump truck. He’s got “big, important things to do” and doesn’t have time to say hello to the little guys out there. Of course, when dump gets stuck in the mud, little blue truck and his friends are there to help him out, leaving dump a much friendly truck by the end of the story. Although the text is longer than a typical Sandra Boynton favorite, it’s written in rhyme and includes animal and truck sounds.

Now that Buba and Tiny have become more interested in books with longer texts, I’m looking forward to sharing some of my personal favorites with them in the near future (Blueberries for Sal, George and Martha One Fine Day, Bread and Jam for Frances, The Poky Little Puppy, etc, etc, etc…).

And in case you didn’t know, today is the kickoff to Children’s Book Week, so it’s the perfect time to discuss great books for kids. Please share with me some of the books you enjoy reading with your kids, as well as your own personal favorites from childhood. I can’t wait to share so new ones with Tiny and Buba, so don’t hold back. The more the merrier!

Seconds

It’s starting to happen. Those mommy friends of mine, whose first borns are roughly the same age as Buba and Tiny, are starting to have seconds. And so it was, at breakfast this morning, that I had the following conversation with Tiny…

Me: Guess what! Ona’s mommy has a new baby!

(No reaction whatsoever from Buba.)

Tiny: Ona’s mommy have new baby. (thinking… processing…)

Me: That’s right. A little, tiny baby.

Tiny: It go rock-a-bye baby. (Tiny says, doing the sign for baby.)

Me: Yes. Now Ona has a little sister.

Tiny pauses for a minute and then looks at me with eyebrows low and  a little crinkle in the middle of her forehead.

Tiny: Tiny, no have little sister. (She says shaking her head from side to side.)

Me: (I’m smiling, but my eyes are getting all teary.) That’s right. Tiny doesn’t have a little sister. But you have a brother, and that’s lots of fun. Right?

Tiny: (looking over at Buba) Dats lota fun.

I know that Tiny’s comment about not having a little sister was not so much a request or a longing on her part, but just her way of a making sense of things. (She processes like this all the time, but that’s for another post.) But I couldn’t help feeling a little sad, knowing that my baby days are over for good and Buba and Tiny will not have another sibling.

T started saying “one and done” the moment we found out we were having twins. But I held out hope for a long time that we would have just one more. Every time the topic was up for discussion, it wasn’t fun. We both held firm on our positions, and finally, just last spring, I gave in. Tiny and Buba were just over a year old and I was working on making our travel plans back to my hometown in Iowa. After almost having a heart attack over what the airfare was going to cost us (we bought the kids seats, at the recommendation of another MOT) I began to imagine how much more it would be if we had a third child (or, gasp!, another set of twins). Suddenly T’s argument regarding the costs of having a larger family began to make sense, and I told him that I could be perfectly happy with our family of four.

And I am perfectly happy. But I still think sometimes about what it would be like to have just one more.

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If you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out yesterday’s post to enter my Humpty Who? giveaway.

My Next Move

Today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. In the last week, I have seen and heard more adds about Earth Day and “going green” than ever before, and they’ve gotten me thinking about what we already do to help take care of the Earth and what more we could be doing.

So far we…

* recycle cans, bottles, plastics, and print materials

* use energy saving lightbulbs

* use reusable shopping bags (not all the time, but as often as I can remember to bring them- maybe 70% of the time)

* wash our laundry in cold water

* buy gently used clothing and toys

* donate to Goodwill and offer up items to Freecycle

* recently replaced some old windows with energy saving windows

Of course, there are areas where we could definitely be doing better. I’d like to work on using fewer disposable paper products (predominantly napkins and paper towels), and although we’re down to about 3 disposable diapers a day, I’m hoping it won’t be too much longer before we can get that number even lower. But one thing I’ve been thinking about for a while now is online banking. I’ve always been a little nervous to start doing online bill paying, but I’m wondering if that would be another way to cut down on the amount of paper we consume. I’m sure it would cut down the number of checks we use, but would it cut down on paper statements and envelopes?

If you participate in online bill paying I’d love to hear your feedback. What do you like about it? What don’t you like? And if you’re still a check, envelope, and stamp gal (or guy), like myself, what keeps you from making the switch?

And, of course, additional tips about how to green up everyday living will absolutely be appreciated.

Happy Earth Day!

I’m Not A Slacker

I swear to you, I am not a slacker. If you knew me in high school or college, you would know that I am an extremely determined, hard-working person. However, if you knew me only through my book club (the mothers’ book club I joined back in November), you might think that I’m the world’s biggest sacker. Because I just can’t seem to finish any of the books. Sometimes I don’t even come close. This is not something I’m proud of. But after meeting a woman in the club who has 6 children under 8 years old (no twins) AND who managed to finish our last book when I only got about a third of the way through, I decided I needed to come up with a plan that would give me more time in each day for reading.

My plan was to dedicate at least 30 minutes of nap time and 30 minutes before going to bed as time for me to spend reading. But the major flaw in this plan was not factoring in fatigue. The moment I sit down to read, I feel completely exhausted and usually find myself nodding off within 15 minutes. So, I need a new plan. Perhaps a nap right after lunch and then a bit of reading time before the kids wake up? I suppose it’s worth a try.

It’s entirely possible that I’ll be that woman (the one who always comes to book club unprepared) for a few more months. But I’d rather show up unprepared than drop out and lose that one time a month where I get to have adult conversations with other local moms.

I think I can, I think I can….