A momentous occasion

This is Sammi.This is Sammi FINALLY drinking from a cup.
This is Sammi, the baby who will only drink HOT milk from BOTTLES, drinking COLD milk from a straw cup!

There is hope we might get rid of those bottles after all.

(Look at that hair. I have no idea what to do with that hair.)

My grandparents dogwood tree is in bloom already. They planted it when one of their children died suddenly at the age of 36. Every year I am so happy that family still lives in their house, able to appreciate the tree for what they wanted it to be - a symbol of his life.

In other short news (Sammi is demanding attention again, surprise!) - I was as sick as I have ever been yesterday. Yesterday was 13 weeks and I swear I am becoming hostile about this nausea. I have furniture to paint and things to make and I am so freaking sick of the gagging.

Thankfully today is a new day and I am feeling slightly less hostile about all of it. (Even if I do feel very unsure about how long I can hold down that bagel. Argh.)

Hello Easter Bunny

We took the kids to see the Easter Bunny yesterday. Usually this is a *pleasure* I have all to myself, but we had 5 minutes free, so off we went. I figured Sammi would cry because she is starting to have separation anxiety, but she smiled and off we went. Whew.

(I couldn't be more relieved. I still think about Jack having an utter meltdown over that %#@*$ bunny when he was three.)
It also became painfully obvious yesterday that despite having her very own dandy (that is the same blanket as Jacks) and despite my having Jack sleep with her dandy for more than a month, that Sammi is DESPERATELY in love with Jack's dandies. (There are two of them.) She wants nothing more than to cover herself with them. And Jack wants nothing more than for her to let go of them so he can drag them around. (Nearly 8 years later. Color me surprised).

In a move that is VERY unlike me these days I bought this at a garage sale. It's huge. And I have no clue what to do with it. But I figure there will be some room shifting here very soon and perhaps I would find myself sorry I hadn't bought it. Particularly since it was $7 whole dollars.

But it is making me a little twitchy since it is in the way in the garage. In this house I have only kept things I know we have a use for or that I just love way, way, way too much to get rid of.

Still though. $7? I couldn't leave it there, right?

Happy Sunday y'all! I hope some nice Indian food is in my future for dinner. Yummy!

What we're up to

I have felt *slightly* normal this week. That means I am back to doing all the mom things that no one has been doing for 8 weeks! Mopping, laundry, vacuuming, digging out the laundry room (you couldn't even walk in there anymore) and changing up the holiday decorations (which were still from Christmas and Sammi's birthday, ahem).

I also had my 12 week ultrasound yesterday. Our baby is already measuring huge (I don't let that worry me, my kids are not little) at 7 cm and 3 ounces. Whoa. Amazing what 8 weeks can do.
(This one is hard to tell but it's a bent leg and foot). It never gets old you know? Seeing that egg turn into an egg sac which turns into a little gummy bear which turns into a little blob with arm buds and leg buds and then into a baby. Ours was trying desperately to suck it's little thumb already.

Miraculous.
Jack has turned his room into the library and has decided we should knock before entering. Where did those years go?
We bought and built the fort! It's not all the way done yet (needs some leveling and mulch), but Jack loves playing on it and so does Sammi. Win!
I put out the Easter postcards.
I put a few Easter things on the mantle.
It's not my usual all out Easter affair, but it'll do.
I am still too tired to think of taking it all down.
And s0me day I might like to sew something again instead of doing house work.

There is another big storm rolling in (complete with tornadoes, oy) and I have the oven on for cookies (see? mama is back!) so I better go get them in there before we lose power.

Happy Friday to you all!

Pinned it and bought it

Oy. My house is so freaking chaotic right now. I am going a bit insane. I am way too exhausted to keep up with all these damn messes. Or to blog.

Sigh.

This is stuff that was bought many moons ago. It has only taken me 3 weeks to get the pictures off the camera.
A cheap quilt.

It's not a super fab pattern, but there are some very sweet fabrics.

I am considering the unthinkable - cutting it up for the fabrics I want.

It's in decent enough shape so I could sell it. But this type of quilt is just not going to bring a lot of $$.
A cool set of blocks for Jack.
I am terrified he will lose the pieces since it is actually complete.

A sweet old bear. He was stinky. I accidentally left him out in the sudden rain when I was sunning him. Oy. I think I need to try washing it and get it over with.

Onto my pinned it and bought it. I pinned this photo of a kid's room and fell in love.

I happened on two chalkboards that weekend. This little one...
And this big one (which needs it's tray reattached).

If the new baby is a girl I will likely just move her into Sammi's room as it is and move Sammi into what was my room as a little girl. Then Sam will get the chalkboard wall in her new room. If the new baby is a boy the chalkboard wall will go in his room.

I just need 2 or 3 more chalkboards...

12 weeks on Tuesday. Certainly life will return to me soon, right?

Sweet Sammi on a Friday

I want to thank you all for your homeschooling input. There is not only a lot of good info there, but a lot of things that I think really speak to the heart of the matter with Jack.

I have had some photos of thrifted stuff taken for a week to show you, but I need to find a cord to get them off the camera. Plus the children have changed some of the computer settings and I can't get the computer to suck the photos off the camera properly.

So how about some cute photos of Sammi until I get my picture thing sorted?Her hair is suddenly long and seemingly overnight.

And she is developing a genuine toddler attitude to go with it. We have opinions galore over here now.

We also finally have a third tooth. And more time spent walking than crawling. And the addition of STOP to her vocabulary which is used to tell Jack to bugger off.

It has been super, super warm here. Like 85 degrees warm. Spring has sprung and we are spending most of the day outside. I am still hoping that the damn puke monster will stop chasing me soon. I'm over it.

With that I have to go feed a little person some oatmeal.

Happy Friday.

P.S. We are going to costco to buy the fort this evening. :-)

Can we talk about homeschooling?

So. I know we have blah blah blah'ed about Jack and school before.

But I think my problems are not getting any better and are not likely to get any better any time in the foreseeable future.

(If you are new here the long and short of it is this - Jack is exceptionally smart. He is what our ped calls "twice exceptional"- very, very high IQ and "quirky" on top of it. Jack does the gifted program at school one day a week. I finally got them to send him to second grade for math two days a week. Additionally he does one day a week of Khan academy for math. Dave and I are both feeling like Jack has pretty much stagnated this year. His behavior at home continues to fall apart and I believe 100% that this is because of the school situation. We did NOT have these issues when he only went to public school part time. His school days now are from 8 am to 4 30 pm.)

So. I want to think a little more about homeschooling. I am still not sure this is really the answer for us, but I need to sort out the logistics of how it works to see if it is at all feasible for us.

Here's what I want to know -
*How many hours a day do you devote to it?
*Where do you get your curriculum?
*If you use an online curriculum how on earth do you deal with kids who overload when they spend too much time looking at screens? (Jack loves Khan academy, but any more than 2 hours a day of screens and he is OVERLOADED).
*If you plan to reenter public school what is the road map for that? Sometime in elementary? Middle school?
*Are you worried about how that affects the outlook for college?
*What about managing a herd of littles while trying to manage a homeschooling kid?
*What stuff do you meet with a "homeschooling group" for? (I have signed up for a local list serv but that seems completely useless.)
*Are you using the public school for anything? Special services? Gifted programs? Part time enrollment?
*If you have a challenging kid does it make you feel more burned out than if you just gave in and sent them to school? (Be honest! Jack and I butt heads A LOT and I am worried this might be hard on us both.)
*How do your kids feel about it? Totally on board? Iffy? Would rather be in school? Wonder what they are missing? (I haven't asked Jack about it yet.)
*Anything else?

Feel free to email me at makinprojiks@gmail.com if you don't want to spew your business all over the internets. ;-)

I have been forced to shop on the internet

The past two days have been warm (and WINDY) and it's reminded me of how anxious I am for spring this year.

My kids need to play outside more*. It means the ends of the first trimester yuckies. And it means the start of junk season.

Because of the aforementioned thrift shop dreck, I have resorted to internet shopping.

I bought this quilt on fleabay last week.
It has two pretty big tears in the middle which I think I am just going to zig zag over to keep it together.
But it's so sweet.
And perfectly faded.

And it scratched my junk itch.

Until I won another quilt last night. :-)

I looked at some quilts locally a few months ago that belonged to someone who was looking to clear out an estate. I made a very fair offer on them, but someone else told them they were worth $500 (!!!) each. (They were very standard patterns in 1930-1940's fabrics.) So of course my (top dollar for me) offer looked pathetic. I have since heard they are destined for auction. Which makes me a little sad. I do hope they find a good home, but that price is completely outrageous.

A quilt has to be pretty fantastic to even bring $100 on Ebay these days. (Fabric seems to bring a lot more money than the finished quilts right now.)

Anyway. The point of the story is if you are looking to buy quilts Ebay is the place to be right now. $50 can buy you something really sweet. (And in better condition. $50 is high for me. This one was about $20.)

At least for now.


*Dave and I are engaged in a little debate about outside toys right now. Jack saw a big swingset at Costco he is REALLY keen to have. (Two story fort!). I say we just buy it. We have Sam and fingers crossed and the creek don't rise we are about to have another little person. The kids will get many years worth of play out of it. Dave thinks it's a lot of money for a "swing arm" and would rather dream of building some elaborate play fort thing himself. Which is nice and all, but honestly, that ends up costing the same amount of money and takes a LOT more time and effort than just buying the thing at costco. What to do, what to do.

Speaking of our other little person, I have another OB appt tomorrow. I am starting to have a bit of my "had way too many miscarriages" anxiety because I have been feeling better. Oy.

Dreck

Since I was feeling pretty okay yesterday Sammi and I did some thrifting.

The thrift stores here are still filled with dreck.

And nearly empty.

It was a waste of expensive gas really.

And I am counting the weeks until garage sale season starts. (I should be past the first trimester yuckies by then, hurray!)

Here is the big exciting grand haul from THREE thrifts. Oy.
Toot and Puddle. I had no idea this was written by Holly Hobbie until someone pointed it out on facebook. The kids and I like to watch them on one of those satellite kid's channels.
A vintage sweater dress for Sammi.
Made in Italy for Stix Baer & Fuller. I remember that store from when I was little. They became Dillards in the '80's.--
And a forget me not tureen. I am sure that 6 months from now I will wonder why on earth I bought this. It's not terribly useful. But it is pretty. And I was desperate.

I bought a big pile of these Japanese lanterns more than a month ago and just never took a picture of them.

And now my punishment for slacking off yesterday is that I get to spend today getting Jack's clothes ready to sell at the consignment sale. I hate that chore. But selling his stuff gets me in the door a day early so there is better stuff to buy for the kids. I don't dare sell anything of Sammi's because we all know I am hoping for another girl. Which certainly means we are having another boy. :-)

Tales from the trenches

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: I just deleted the google friends widget because it was just showing an empty box. Sorry if I messed anyone up there. I thought it was still supposed to work for blogger blogs? But apparently it wasn't working for me.

Last Friday I took Sammi to the ped because the amount of time she was spending crying was simply not proportionate to the head cold we had.

She has ANOTHER stinking, freaking ear infection.

And her right ear tube? Not functioning at all. It's possible it's blocked with wax. (She has really small ear canals and seems to be causing some wax trouble.)

So. Back on augmentin and back on the drops in the hopes that the drops will free up the tube. (And if they don't? I am not sure I can go through that surgery again. For real.)

I was not at all happy about that, but whatever.

Then on Saturday we go to Costco to try and round up some food for this house.

Sammi should have been named EAT. This girl wants to EAT EAT EAT. She signs eat constantly. She sits in her carseat and sees pictures of food when we are out and says MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM and starts signing to eat.

Costco was heaven for her on a Saturday - food samples everywhere.

Dave gives her two tiny bites of some talapia.

We come home and take a nap. I pick her up 2 hours later when she wakes up and notice she has giant hives ALL OVER HER!

Call the exchange for the ped, which leads to Children's Hospital. The nurse decides she is allergic to the augmentin and says stop the meds and take her to urgent care.

Oh hell no.

The flu is running rampant here for starters, I am not going into the hot bed of flu town at the urgent care. Secondly Sammi has had nearly 2 months of Augmentin before with no issues. Third, Jack had a bad antibiotic allergy in kindergarten which left him unable to walk and this looks nothing like that.

I decided to go with my own gut and keep giving her the augmentin.

Because *I* am allergic to all kinds of fish and I know darn and good and well those hives are from eating fish.

They disappeared an hour later.

No more hives since.

But from now on Sammi, aka EAT, is on the "if mama can't eat it, Sammi can't eat it" diet. (She has also had a problem with mango, which is an issue for me too.)

And that's the weekend fun I had.

But this girl? LORDY she is stinking cute.

And yesterday? She gave me a kiss! Toddling all over and kissing. Sweet.

My gagging seems to be letting up a little. Perhaps I will return to life soon? :-)

I didn't mean

Just for fun...

"I didn't mean to miss your birthday baby
I wish I'd seen you blow those candles oooooooooouuuuuuuuuttttttttttttt"

It's my boyfriends 50th (!!!) birthday today.

Man that smile!

Hapde Burfday Baby.

P.S. Still sick. Taking Sammi to the ped as all she does is cry. I am 50 kinds of sick myself. House is falling down around me. Have no groceries. Have not slept in 3 nights. Must find reprieve soon. Will listen to boyfriend's music all day and hope magic fairies are on the way.