JaRuuds

Yesterday was back to our regular routine. Or so I thought.  Mark was back to work.  I was “back to work”.  Auden and Parker got ready for school.

After ten minutes of waiting in the rain at the bus stop, we had not seen any of the usual buses going down the highway towards their routes.  Certainly not their bus.  It dawned on me-  I bet there’s no school today.  I called the school.  No answer.  Not a good sign.  Back at home, I figured out it was a teacher workday.

I had thought I was pretty prepared for our first Monday in the new year.  I got up earlier than I used to (NY resolution #1), and was dressed before the kids woke up.  Growing up, my mom was dressed every day the first time I saw her, even on Christmas.  My kids can say nothing of the sort.

In early December, I started a part-time gig taking care of a 8 month old, three days a week.  I shall call him Mr. C.  Yesterday Mr. C was back after a week holiday.  Having him around is a good chance for me to practice having four kids.  It’s teaching me to plan ahead.  Think things through.  Bring what we need.  I used to think I was a quick learner, but I seem to need to learn this lesson over and over again. I did  prepare for Monday, in that I cleaned up all the teeny choking hazard toys, set up his bed, and had breakfast ready early.

But we were still rushing to get out the door to the bus stop.  I’d remembered to have the boys locate their folders and backpacks the night before, but not their coats.  Which Mark had kept packed in a duffel bag in the garage from taking them fossil digging the day before.  Is this where you would think to looks for boys’ coats?  No?  How strange.  So after searching the house for the coats, and being reminded “Snack Mom!”, which hadn’t occurred to me at all, we were now late.  This meant I decided to carry Mr. C. on my hip to the bus stop instead of grabbing a stroller or carrier.

Mr. C. is no lightweight.  I don’t actually know what he weighs, but he is a solid baby.  One needs two hands to support his weight very long.  Greta usually runs ahead with her brothers, but she was being extreeeeemely pokey.  I couldn’t hold her hand for long  to encourage her to walk faster.  Auden was way ahead of us, and Parker was in the middle of us.  I tried walking ahead of Greta, to get her to catch up, but it was not happening.  Walking, all of us ten feet or so apart, is not safe with young kids!  Did I mention parts of the walk have no sidewalk? 

I corralled everybody back together, tried again.  Explain to Greta- the boys are going to miss the bus if she doesn’t walk faster.  Explain to the boys- they need to slow down.  I can’t make sure four different stages of people are safe from cars. But soon we were back to the same position, all apart.  AAAAACK!  Finally I carried a crying Greta, along with Mr. C., and nearly broke my arms off.  I used to carry both twins like that, but I am SO out of shape these days, and three months pregnant.  I don’t know what could’ve remedied the situation, but I do know what could’ve prevented it- having Mr. C. in a stroller so I could’ve managed the kids without getting so irritated- why were my requests were falling on deaf ears?  My “plan” of no stroller worked if all went swimmingly, but with four kids together, what are the chances of that?

After the bus debacle, I had two extra kids at home I hadn’t planned on.  We decided on heading to the library after Mr. C. had his morning nap.  But instead of prepping for the outing during his nap, I did the dishes.  Which meant, after he woke up, that I still needed to locate our overdue library books from any of the various stacks in every room, comb Greta’s hair, etc., etc.  And for whatever reason, Mr. C. did not want to do anything but get carried around while I did this.  I rushed around for at least 15 minutes with him either on my hip or crying, crawling after me.  My lesson here- get prepared for the next thing first.

Things improved after that.  The library outing was a fine diversion with no calamities.

Also on success side, we made an awesome dinner.  Oh, how I wish now I managed to get out the camera.  It was SO GREEN!  One of the splurgiest Christmas gifts I got was a pasta attachment for our KitchenAid from Mark.  I’ve had two different pasta makers before, but this one makes the most impressive shapes.  Macaroni!  Fusilli!  Yesterday, during Greta and Mr. C’s nap, Parker and I made spinach noodles.   I managed to cram a whole POUND of fresh spinach into roughly two pounds of pasta.  They were delish, and I was quite proud of the nutritional factor, especially for my two that insist on eating the noodles plain.  Plain in our house means liberally sprinkled with parmesan cheese.  The rest of us had leftover also extremely yummy marinara sauce with ling cod and shrimp.  [Should I be eating this during pregnancy?  I'm not sure.  The cod was caught by my personal fisherman Uncle Gordon in Alaska, which made me not think maybe as hard about it as I should've.  But feel free to enlighten me if Alaskan cod = very bad mercury levels.]  The combo in the sauce might not seem appetizing, but works somehow.

*I’ve always loved this palindrome.

Plenty of people don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions.  Including my husband.  I think they signal Hope.  Hope that one can change her life for the better, and not just let life happen to her.  Sometimes when I’ve been in the midst of the post-Christmas-letdown-winter-blues of January 1st, I haven’t had enough Resolve to formulate any.

I used to make resolutions at each solstice.  I still think the quarterly reminder makes one more likely to stick with anything.  And I like to mark the passing of the seasons.  But I’ve gotten away from Solstice Resolutions as a mom because, well, I just don’t have it in me.

This year, I’m considering a long list of New Year’s Resolutions though.  I just need to cull it down to something attainable.

1. To wake up weekdays by 6:30 – destressing that time of day.

2. Work on communication with my husband.

3. Take more walks.

4. Play more with my kids.

5. Read more books.

6. Watch very little TV.  Potentially “break” our TV altogether.

7. Create chore charts for my kids – less nagging them to pick up, more actual choring being done

8. Reinstate our family meetings that have fallen by the wayside.

9. Formulate a plan for picking up more income and/or reducing expenses so that the two actually match.

10. Last but not least- take care of my body and mind in order to grow a whole new person!

I should probably toss the list and just have one: Be perfect.  Sounds doable, right?

I’ll let you know what I go with.

For the past month, I had become increasingly sure I’m growing two babies.  I was worried enough to ask my midwife for an ultrasound as soon as possible.  I’d never had one in the first trimester before.

Yesterday was the big day.  Within a few seconds of scanning, we had our answer- ONE baby.  One!  Healthy!  Baby!

She gave us a little  show of bouncing around.  Hopefully she won’t get too used to somersaulting (Greta’s resulted in a cord twisted and twisted around her).  At this point, we couldn’t see much of a face.  Even though she’s less than 1.5 inches long, she already has so much information stored inside her- all the characteristics I wonder about.  Will she grow brown hair, be laid back, and look more like Auden than Parker and Greta?  As I picture.  Will she be a she?  She will reveal her traits in time.

I have to admit, it does feel a bit anti-climatic.  I had it in my head I’d be calling people yesterday, with news of two or even three babies.  Freaking out.  I was all prepared for going into crisis mode.  Mind you, we don’t want more than one baby by any stretch.  And I’m not sure we’d survive very well.  One might test our family enough.  And a 2-1-3 family (twins, single, triplets) isn’t enough for a reality TV career.  Still, one single fourth baby seems so normal.  I guess we’ll just have to find different ways to be abnormal.

Greta just sat down beside me and started scanning her belly with a flashlight, looking for her own “baby”.  (She got to attend the ultrasound yesterday.)  A couple minutes later, she ran out and came back with a baby doll bib around her neck.  The speed with which she switches between pretending she’s a mama, pretending she’s a baby, and just being plain two years old has been baffling me.  Lots of processing going on in her brain!

As soon as we got home from my parents after Thanksgiving, Parker started up the begging to put up the Christmas tree.  Last year we succumbed and bought an artificial tree.  I don’t know if it’s really better for the environment or not- we’re not cutting down a tree every year, but eventually it will end up in a landfill instead of composted.  At any rate, the current minus is lack of evergreen smell, but the current plus is you can keep it up Black Friday to January 10th or so.
This year I wasn’t in any hurry to put it up, but I knew it would be sooner than later.  What I told Parker was, “As soon as I catch up on laundry and dishes and pick up the family room, we can put it up.” Which I knew I’d have to go back on, because that would mean it would go up next October.  Soon afterwards, I noticed Parker, up on a stool at the sink.  “How do I do this again?” he asked.  So, he scrubbed a few pots, and I decided Why not?
After the tree was up, though, I hit a snag. I could not locate the box of ornaments anywhere in the garage.  They’ve “gotta be somewhere” as Auden likes to say, but I haven’t found them yet.  Never fear, creative kids to the rescue.  They did this Monday morning before I was even downstairs.

Our tree is now an eagle-kitty cat-Bakugan-scorpian-semi-truck-Clone Trooper-hammerhead shark-trap door spider-themed tree.  In other words, Perfect.  For us JaRuuds, that is.  I’m sure not for your family.

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In other news, I’ve been feeling much better. All my pregnancy symptoms ceased so suddenly that I was getting worried, but it’s been almost two weeks, so I guess all is well in there. Currently the only things making me nauseous are turkey, gingerbread, and peanut butter. The latter is truly unfortunate as my kids demand it at least once or twice a day. Maybe it’s time for them to branch out nutritionally. Currently I’m scrubbing Greta’s face and hands down with citrus soap after lunch so I can stand to lay down with her to start her nap. Overall, though, I don’t have much to complain about. Except how crappy the options are for VBACs. But that’s a topic for another day.

I was glad I posted that I was going to keep track of my time for a week.  Otherwise I might have been tempted to be less than deligent about it. And I think it’s pretty fun data to look at.  But I’m a geek.  If you don’t like data, just skip this one.  Did I tell you I rocked all my lab reports in high school and college?

Take a look. One thing is pretty obvious, and I knew it before I started. If I want to free up more time each day, I need to get off the computer (I say, as I sit here with my laptop).

Here’s the nitty gritty of how I took the data and categorized:

I looked at a semi-normal “work week”, Monday through Friday, 10/26-10/30. Semi-normal because 2/3 of my kids stayed home sick at least one day from school.
A good portion of the time I’m doing twenty bazillion things at once. I counted the activity that was the more “productive”, somewhat arbitrarily. For instance, if I was folding laundry and watching TV, I called it laundry.  In the kitchen category, there’s plently of time that was spent putting on somebody’s shoes, mediating a squabble, or answering a phone call. I wasn’t that exact. But if I left the kitchen more than 5 min, I tried to count it.
I didn’t put sleep in the graph to leave room for the other categories, but it averaged 6.5 hours a night.

Here’s what some of the categories mean:

• Kids (3.63 hours)- I was actually surprised at how high this number is. The time I was with the kids, but doing something else, like laundry or the computer, isn’t included. This is straight kid-mama time- talking to them, bathing, crafting, reading, playing LEGOs, puzzling, bedtiming, cuddling, and taking them to swimming lessons (the one regularly scheduled non-school activity every week).
• Computer (2.93 hours)- I wasn’t so surprised at how high this number was. Mainly because every time I’m on the computer, I’m thinking how I’m wasting my time. Because there’s always a million other things. And work on the computer isn’t concrete.  How do I manage to spend 3 hours a DAY on it?  I’m not really sure, exactly.  I read email, send email, look up directions, recipes, read blogs, comment on blogs, put a few minutes into the Facebook timesink, pay bills, track if next month I’ll be able to pay the bills, and figure out why that guy in the movie we’re watching looks familiar.
• Kitchen (2.77 hours)- This includes prepping 3 meals and multiple snacks, serving said meals, and cleaning them up. I separated out actual sitting down to eat.  I feel good about this number [Sounds like what they say on The Biggest Loser, right?  Hey, it's a show about food.]
• Preschool (1.23 hours)- We belong to a cooperative preschool, so this included time actually with the kids, to-and-from school driving time, a parent meeting, and some fundraising.  Most weeks I don’t spend quite this much time, but it does put things in perspective for me.
• Eating (0.76 hours)- Meaning I sit for an average of 15 minutes each meal.  Not bad for a mama of 3, really.  Some days I loooong for the days when Mark and I lingered at the table, talking.
• Mark (0.52 hours)- As with kidtime, this is straight Mark-only time. ‘Nuff said.
• TV (0.52 hours)- I’m not sure what it says that this is the exact amount of time I spent with Mark, also.
• Friends (0.45 hours)- Face-to-face, not on-line or phone.  I’d like to have more adult interaction, laughing, and support, but I recognize it’s hard to do right now.  Also, it can be built into preschool, park, kitchen, and eating, if I could just find time to arrange it…
• Bus stop (0.43 hours)- I’m not much of a waiter.  Not the food service kind, the can-handle-waiting-on-other-people kind.  I keep telling myself it would be one thing if our bus stop was on a quieter street, so I could enjoy nature and my daughter while we wait.  Instead, it’s along a 5 lane highway, where I’m always afraid my daughter going to get run over, and where I can’t answer my cell phone because the cars rushing by are so loud.  It is a break in the day of housework, though, and a short walk.
• Insomnia (0.40 hours)- Middle of the night, wideawakeness.  This was 2 hours all on one night.  It makes the next day a bear.  Once a week is about the yoush.
• Grooming (0.30 hours)- Mark thought this choice of category name was hilarious. ”Are you a pet?”  I just meant, showering, washing my face on the days I didn’t shower, putting on the rare application of mascara, plucking eyebrows.  Isn’t that grooming?
• Cleaning (0.24 hours)- See, I told you this is my corner.
• Other (1.55 hours)- Included resting, phone calls, organizing, packing/unpacking for daily outings, pet care, planning our lives out on the calendar, etc.

I plan to post on my plans to modify some of my days based upon what I found.  But right now, a 2 year old has woken up and brought me 23 books and counting.  I’m not joking.  So that will wait.  ***By the time I spellchecked, it was 31.  I counted.  See, all about the data.

Last week I posted about my mishaps getting usable sunflower seeds from the flowers we grew.  I ended up with about a cup of extra extra toasted, semi-crushed sunflowers seeds.  I considered baking bread, but I had a couple loaves of store-bought, and I wasn’t 100% sure what they would do in a yeast bread.  Could I just add them in, or would they replace just a bit of the flour?

Instead, I went with what I know- a quick bread.  The choice was also steered by remembering I had some banana puree in the freezer. 

It’s hard to go wrong with quick breads and muffins.  One can get away with lots of substitutions in a quick bread, so they are perfect recipes to play with.  Playing with a quick bread recipe means adding nutrition and using up good food that doesn’t have another obvious purpose.  I’ve added in the past: browned apples, leftover thawed blueberries, and the twelve raisins and two almonds sitting in a bowl that were originally served as oatmeal toppings.  You can even add leftover oatmeal itself.

In my double batch of banana bread, I added all the toasted sunflower seeds I had, and substituted most of the white flour in the Betty Crocker recipe with wheat flour, gluten, wheat germ, and wheat bran.  One of my boys asked, “Are these chocolate chips in here?”  That was how toasted the sunflowers were!  Brown, but not burnt.  Was it a disservice to his nutritional education that I let him believe they were chocolate?  Either way, yum.