how I get happy attitudes around here

If you have more than one child, you know that sometimes it can be difficult to get your kids to get along and be good helpers and all that. My family is no exception. On a regular basis I am breaking up fights and disciplining children for unkind words, and oh the messes they can make and then refuse to clean up.

So what's a pregnant and exhausted momma to do in such a situation? I pulled a trick out of the book of tricks that my local public school must have read. I first bought a HUGE bag of Tootsie Rolls for rewards, then I set up a reward system for different tasks and behaviors. And this weekend, I'm going to the dollar store to get a crate, some little trinkets, and some poster board so that I can make a treasure chest and chart to earn a dive in the chest.

Now, it sounds like I just stooped to bribing my kids with candy, and that's pretty accurate. BUT, so far today I have a clean kids' bedroom, 4 kids dressed, their breakfast dishes in the sink, the little 2 did their Awana verse practice, and now they are cleaning up the mess they made in the bathroom (including cleaning the toothpaste off the wall that SOMEONE smeared all over it, an entire big tube GONE in one shot). All for the total of 4 tootsie rolls each, and the bathroom (being an extra chore considering what all needs done in there) will earn them each another 4 tootsie rolls. My plan is to take advantage of the Halloween candy that's being sold right now to add some variety to my instant rewards, and upgrade it to a bucket (with a lock on it of course, I'm not stupid).

So how do I handle misbehavior with such a system in place? Well, that's easy. Right now Liddy has decided that she does not want to help with cleaning up the bathroom mess, so when its done she won't get any tootsie rolls. Or, in the case of fighting, the two sisters have to work together on a task (usually something disgusting like cleaning the hamster cage or washing out the insides of trash cans). They also can lose the ability to go to Awana, or to participate in our weekly girls' night (pizzas and a movie, Scott is banished to the bedroom while we take over the living room for this). Last week they all four lost the ability to go to Awana by misbehaving in the grocery store (I had to break up an actual fist fight, that almost NEVER happens here, plus they were all disrespectful to me, one another, and the other customers and ignored my reminders of proper behavior and back-talked me constantly).

And I do everything possible to remain consistent with my ways of doing things. Consistency is more important than anything, if I reward and discourage behaviors the same across the board then they learn what the right actions and attitudes are to have. I'm still working on how to incorporate our reward system into our schooling, which is where the treasure chest comes in. That one will have a daily small reward from the bucket, and a weekly reward from the chest. Hopefully it works well and doesn't backfire on me.

car seat is ready

Yes, I said I got the car seat ready for this baby. LOL As of yesterday, I am 17 weeks pregnant. I'm currently assessing the things we have and are getting these things out and ready so that we can start on the real fun: buying everything ELSE we need. Since we gave the crib and all our baby clothes to a friend's sister, we have literally nothing for basics. I'm hoping I can find the pack n' play for us to use until the tax refund comes and I can buy a crib. Hmmm I think we may *not* have fully thought this through before we decided to have baby #5, it may have been better to wait a few extra months so that I had the tax refund to shop. Eh, we'll figure it out.

So, the first thing we got ready is the most important item of all. We can NOT bring the baby home without a proper car seat. Now, if you know me, you know I'm a safety junkie. I keep up with all the latest safety in regards to car safety and my children. We rear-face until they hit the limits of a seat, then we forward face with a harness until they show the maturity required to sit properly in a booster full time (as long as they meet the legal requirements for a booster as well). Currently, I have 3 in boosters and one in belt only (she passes the 5 step test where she sits, no worries!).

So I decided to get out the convertible seat and get it ready today. Cover: cleaned up. Harness: dropped to bottom slots. Infant insert: found, cleaned up, and put on. Rear facing boot: hunted down, wiped down, attached. Now I just need Scott to put the middle seat for our middle row back in the van so I have a place to install the seat. This baby will be riding in the luxury of a Sunshine Kids Radian80 car seat, which rear faces from 5-33lbs and forward faces from 20-80lbs (yes it IS a harness that goes that high, it does NOT do the booster thing at all!!!!) It has a steel frame inside that plastic shell, and is very plush. It was donated to us when Jojo was a baby by the Kyle David Miller Foundation, and it has 4 years left of the 8 year life span (I had to double check the life span, most seats expire 6 years from date of manufacture but some do go to 8 years). This seat should work just fine and dandy for the baby from birth with the infant insert, if my girls' sizes are any indication of the size this baby will be. I can't wait to get this seat back in use regularly.

And for those whose heads are spinning at my using a convertible instead of an infant seat....... if the baby does NOT fit properly in this seat then I shall wait at the hospital with baby while Scott runs to the store to buy an infant seat to use instead. I have one already picked out, and the local WalMart carries it. But we will not be buying it unless the baby NEEDS a smaller seat, or someone decides to look up my WalMart baby registry and buy some of the stuff for us (I'm using it as a checklist for what we still need to buy for the baby, all our needs plus the goodies we want if we have enough money/time).

God bless the person who discovered peanut butter

I do NOT like peanut butter. I think it has a nasty texture and it tastes bad. So, why am I blessing the person who discovered it? Well, I am sitting here eating it by the spoonful from a jar now, and its one of the few things that is consistently staying down. I hate it but I cannot stop eating it.

I hope this one passes soon, I don't know how long I'll be able to keep up this peanut butter thing......

holy COW that's cooking!

I made a late supper tonight for the kids, and just realized exactly how much food I cooked. It was spaghetti night since I had some hamburger in the fridge that I needed to use up, so Scott got water on for me to boil up a 3lb box of spaghetti and I got out the big skillet and the hamburger.

Now, if you've not figured out by now, I like to cook. I cook in mass quantities sometimes so that I can have a meal for the freezer, or a leftovers lunch the next day. This meal is one of those leftovers lunch meals. I doubled everything so that Scott has lunch tomorrow at work, and so that I can assemble a spaghetti bake and put in the fridge to just toss in the oven tomorrow for lunch. (I learned during my pregnancy with my oldest that cooking any time other than supper makes me throw up, so I like to cook at night and have crazy leftovers for at least one more meal)

Now, the essential kitchen equipment for a bigger family is slightly larger than a typical family's stuff. Most people find a 10" skillet to be perfectly adequate, while I tend to reach first for my 14" chicken fryer (its one of those ones with 2 handles) when I cook. A stock pot for me is larger than many would consider adequate for cooking. When I cook, recipes that serve 4-6 automatically get doubled or even tripled so that I have enough food. "Family size" packaging at stores makes me laugh because I know it takes at least 2 or 3 packages to feed my family. In the freezer section are frozen macaroni and cheese and lasagna entrees that are marked as "party size" and THAT is the right size to feed us all. So, as you can probably guess, I tend to fall back regularly on my experience cooking in a restaurant kitchen, making large quantities of things at once to serve the dinner rush. I don't do small amounts of food normally.

So tonight's supper consisted of the BIG box of spaghetti noodles (3lb size box), 3 jars of sauce, 3lbs hamburger, and handfuls of various seasonings and dried onion. I need to go out there and assemble Scott's lunch for tomorrow and the spaghetti pan for tomorrow's baked lunch. There may even be enough left to make extra lunches for me to toss in the freezer for Scott to grab and take to work when we don't have leftovers.

Next bulk meal I'm hoping for will be a lasagna. That one will be made in 3 pans, so I have 2 for the freezer on top of the one that I'm going to serve that night for supper.

movement *yay*

Yup, we officially have movement here with parasite. I'm 16 weeks today, and I've not called any of it officially feeling the little booger move simply because it wasn't that strong yet. Well, I can no longer deny it, today it made a few very good attempts at kicking my laptop off my stomach. And a couple nights ago, Scott felt a VERY faint movement himself with his hand firmly on my gut at just the right moment before we went to sleep. Its cute now, but in a few weeks it will get annoying. I already know how I'll react to it, and I can't wait for it to be consistently strong enough kicking and moving for the girls to feel themselves as well.

It makes the next 4 weeks and 2 days until my ultrasound feel like an eternity. I can no longer deny it, there really is another one coming. I can feel movement.

Now if only I could stop throwing up...... but on the up side, I'm losing some of the 12lbs I gained in my first trimester, and I *can* zip my regular jeans up again fairly comfortably. Seems that I may be going the wrong way with that one, I'm supposed to be getting bigger (not smaller). Oh well, I'll pop back out soon enough.

I'll have an update this week hopefully on how the girls' lessons are going, we took some time off with the second trimester pregnancy sickness that has occurred (I had almost none during first trimester).

first baby appointment done finally

I finally got to have my first prenatal appointment yesterday. I'm sure you may remember, I was seeing an OB about 45min away before. Well, before we moved here it wasn't too bad, I had to drive a half hour to get to ANY doctor for my prenatal care. Well, then we moved here and I kept my amazing doctor because it was just the yearly exam right? No biggie. Add a pregnancy and it becomes a big deal, monthly appointments that go to every 2 weeks and then every week makes for a lot of time loading kids, driving, unloading kids, and all that just to see the doctor for 10min or so. So, I got a midwife locally instead, and yesterday was my first appointment with her.

I had to take all 4 girls with me. That's the downside to the local midwife, when I was making that drive out to the OB I wasn't too far from Scott's mom so she'd take the girls while I was at my appointments. Now, I'm not going to drive a half hour to take them to her, then back home to the practice 5min from my house and then go back to get them afterward. That's more gas than staying with the other practice would have used. It makes more sense for me to just pack them along with me, and arrange for her to take them overnight once in a while for certain appointments (like my next one, which I'm getting to).

So, they drew blood (Liddy had to sit on my lap so that I had a cuddle object while the vampire sucked 6 tubes from me) and they weighed me (their scale LIES!!!!!!) and then they asked me for a full history and all sorts of odd questions (ummm yes my husband IS supportive of this baby, he just has to work which is why he wasn't there or watching our kids, bills don't pay themselves you know). The kids watched Signing Time on my laptop while I got all this done..

Enter midwife, and I get to hear a heartbeat. 158 beats a minute, fast little bugger. It ain't looking good for Scott and his hopes that this time he gets a son..... lol I really like her a lot, she's not the one that a few people I know see but I'm very comfortable with her.

My next appointment is October 19th, I'll be about 19 1/2 weeks along and we'll have the anatomy scan and hopefully determine gender at that time too. I sure hope this next 5 weeks passes quickly, I'm really looking forward to this appointment.

God always provides to His faithful ones

So, I'm sure you have figured out by now that my family isn't exactly wealthy. In fact, we are probably the opposite of how I was brought up in this area. When we have extra money, we must spend it wisely and usually do so by stocking up on things that we need like extra food and household supplies (toilet paper, dish and laundry soap, shower soaps, stuff like that). We make it work somehow.

So, I did some calculations not too long ago based on the homeschool materials I have here currently, and realized that I may be lucky to make it to our tax refund with the stuff we have currently. I have curriculum I love, but in some subjects it is too expensive to buy whenever we need it. Those subjects I purchase with the tax refund, attempting to estimate how many levels we'll need in math (for example!) or if our history and science will be enough for a year and what supplemental materials to buy.

Well, I can tell you that I likely miscalculated math. Liddy is close to moving up a level in math to Beta, as are Missa and Kimi (they will likely by Christmas). Which that's no big deal, I have the next level already purchased for all 3 children. However, the rate Liddy goes in math I'll need the level AFTER what I've purchased by my birthday in February most likely. That is where the issue lies. Same in history, we're at a good groove in our program and supplements but I can see us finishing by my birthday, putting me in a position where I'll need to purchase the next core level. So what is a girl to do in a situation like this?

Well first, I take it to prayer. I don't do ANYTHING major without praying first until I know what to do. I still didn't know what to do really, but hey it'll work out. That's about all I knew.

Now enter Scott's old babysitter. She would watch him when he was younger than our children, and she homeschooled her 3 kids. The youngest just recently graduated from homeschool in fact, and she decided to clean off the homeschool shelves. She decided to offer to us first, and said that anything we can't use to pass to someone else who can. I got 6 levels of Math-U-See, starting with the very next level in line from where my current collection leaves off, and a lot of books for history, science, grammar, and other subjects. So now, I have solved the issue of what to do, as I have several years' worth of resources and materials that I can just grab and use, supplementing with the library as needed once I get the 2 teacher sets for the math that aren't here.

I think I need to send Scott over to Home Depot for another shelf and brackets for the shelves in our bedroom where I store all the homeschooling books that aren't currently in use...... almost all of this stuff is totally usable to us, with the exception of a couple items that I know right now we won't be using (like Apologia science). I can't wait until later tonight when I can really get deep into this box and log each book into my library spreadsheet and organize and start skimming books to see what will work when and how to best utilize materials.

Just another example of God providing for us when we come to Him in need. He has many times provided things as we needed for our family, by providing extra overtime for my husband at work or leading others to bless us with things that we may need (as in this case, a bunch of homeschool books) or by simply putting us in the right place at the right moment to find something we need (like a much-needed book at a thrift store, or a $1 clearance rack at Target or WalMart for clothing for one of the kids). And sometimes, God smacks us back to reality by reminding us that we do not need what we think we do, that what we have will work for us well enough.

~Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways. You will eat the fruit of your labor; blessings and prosperity will be yours.~ Psalm 128:1-2 (NIV)

~Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.~ Hebrews 4:16 (NIV)

God will always provide what we need when we truly need it, and sometimes before we need it. But we have to have the confidence and knowledge to approach Him with our needs, otherwise He cannot provide if we do not ask.

When is the last time you approached the throne in prayer and asked Him to bless you with the things you need? No matter how small that need may be (perhaps gas to get to the store or a box of pasta for supper that night), when did you ask Him to provide for you in your time of need? When you truly need something, God will NEVER look the other way. He loves us, and wants us to come to Him with our wants and needs just as we as parents want our children to do with us. Give God the chance, and He will bless you beyond anything you could have ever imagined.

4 years ago yesterday.....

Four years ago yesterday was a holiday. It was Labor Day. It was also 3 days past my due date with my fourth child, and I woke up at about 6am in early labor. She was the only of mine to make it to her due date before being born. She was an unexpected blessing, and it had taken me the first 6 months of my pregnancy to stop being angry at Scott for tossing the condom aside that day. (how's that for TMI mom?) Well, 4 years ago yesterday I fell in love all over again, and we had to FIGHT to time with our baby girl.



An now, here we are with a 4 year old again.......



Happy birthday Pickle...... you are already VERY good at being 4.

seriously? PINK?????

Scott is getting even with me I think. The last two nights, I've refused to take the pain so I stole his pillows and used to prop my back and stomach in bed while I sleep. I don't have any pain when I wake up, but apparently his neck hurts from no pillows.

So he bought me a body pillow today.

He bought a PINK eff'ing body pillow. Like, I've had a lovely $60 pregnancy support pillow picked out at Amazon (with free shipping too!) for a few weeks now that he said I could get. Well, its payday, and I was looking forward to ordering that support pillow this weekend. Instead, he went to WalMart and got me a $10 cheapo body pillow and he had to choose the pink one.

I hate pink. I may be a female, but pink is NOT a color that I feel looks good on anything but bubblegum and flowers. And he got me a PINK pillow.......

I will find the humor in it later, but now I have to get back to Jordan's 4th birthday. But before I go, here's a picture for you to see what I'm looking like at 13 1/2 weeks pregnant.



Yup, I'm going to be HUGE again this time. And no it isn't quadruplets. Yes, we're sure.