flea

Mishmash

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:31:48 GMT

Yesterday I worked 8am-10pm (many thanks to my sister for keeping me from dying of boredom after I ran out of internets at 8:30pm; we discussed smallpox, syphillis, and pernicious anemia, as one does). Then I woke up about every half hour all night - every time to heat came on - because the air vents made some noise that kept triggering my "a child is crying downstairs" reflex. Yawn.
It's cold in Georgia. Even the NYTimes noticed! http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/us/09georgia.html There's a mall in the ATL that makes snow outside every hour from 6-9pm on weekends, and I think we are going to try to go on Saturday. My kids are in love with the idea of snow. Simple frost on the windshield of the car had them shouting with excitement this morning. It's ridiculous, but very cute.
My Girl Scout rant issues continue. I faxed in an RSVP on Friday 12/3, the stated deadline, for my troop to attend an event on Saturday 12/11, and was supposed to receive an email confirming the time (they are scheduling the troops). On Monday I emailed the contact just to check if the fax had been received. She was out of the office but said she would check with them. On Tuesday, not having heard from her, I emailed back. She said she hadn't been able to reach anyone ion the office, but I should give her my troop's info directly and she could register us. I did. On Wednesday, not having heard from her, I emailed again, just to say, "are we registered?" On Thursday morning I called the office, where they told me a) she was the only person who could register troops for this event in their system, b) she was out of the office all week but working from home some and c) the office was "crazy" this week and closed early yesterday and today. The event is now in less than 48 hours and I was supposed to - an email just came in. We are confirmed. Good grief, though. I mean, honestly? Who sets a deadline of Friday the week before an event (in 6 locations across Georgia, all RSVPing through one office) and then takes the next week off? When she's the only one who can register people?
We are going to buy a digital piano as the big family Christmas gift this year. We went in to a local independent store and looked at them, but then I looked on Craigslist and there is a used one for sale in Atlanta for half what they want in the store for a used one, same model. I feel guilty about not patronizing my local store - worse, patronizing and then not buying from them - but saving $250 is not to be sneezed at. We're getting a Yamaha P-60 (replaced now by the P-95), which is an 88-key, weighted machine, with good sound (8 sounds total), and a midi export line so we can buy a $100 cable and hook it up to Garage Band if we want to. I am looking at piano lessons for me, maybe.
I am sort half done Christmas shopping. I hope to accomplish a lot this weekend in the city, at the Fernbank Natural History Museum gift shop, and the big mall where it snows. mr. flea is under strict orders to make some headway in dealing with his family (i.e. acquiring suggestions, which is their practice) by Saturday.
I am so tired.

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In which I am a bad person

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 22:58:42 GMT

I am unduly tired, and want to go to bed right now. I am locked in the back half of the house with the bitchy cat and avoiding my happy family.

I am actively dreading our first Girl Scout meeting tomorrow. Luckily the other Brownie leader is totally a natural and loves doing fun crafts with little girls. I can make spreadsheets and email people, but making bracelets with 7 year olds is not my forte.

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a slightly more successful camping trip

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 21:41:17 GMT

For starters, this time we actually camped, so we started out ahead. We camped at Doll Mountain Campground on Lake Carter (which is a fake dam-lake), which is run by the Army Corps of Engineers and has a shiny new road thanks to stimulus dollars. It was fine; a bit of a hike to the bathroom, and we had a Valdosta State geology class field trip next to us. While they were relatively quiet and respectful, they also got in after 9:30pm both nights we were there.

We had traffic and slowness and got there late ourselves, at maybe 9pm on Friday, and had to put up the tent in the dark. The kids fell asleep right away thankfully, but then Dillo had an hour-long crying fit from 3-4am sparked by, I kid you not, the fact that his nose was stuffy. mr. flea took him to sit in the car during the phase when I was nearly homicidal (I'd been up since 5:15 with him the previous AM.)

We cowboyed up and headed out to New Echota, the Cherokee capital founded in, uh, I think 1819. Most of the buildings on the site are reconstructions or were moved from elsewhere, but it was a pretty good site I thought, and the kids liked it. We ran down to Calhoun on I-75 and had lunch (and COFFEE) and an IHOP, and then went back up to the Chief Vann House, built in 1806 by one of the richest Cherokee, who worked a plantation with 10 slaves (let it not be said that history is simple, folks). I didn't actually go in the house, thanks to Dillo, who dozed a bit in the car, but mr. flea and Casper liked it (Casper told me all about how Joseph Vann drank too much whiskey.)

We picked up some hot dogs and buns at a quickie mart, and I had a nap in the tent while mr. flea took the kids to see the dam. To bed early, but then Dillo was up twice and then spent the rest of the night trying to climb on my head. Picked up some apples in Ellijay rather than pick our own, then home in time for lunch. Which I realize now we forgot to eat, oops.

So, 4 year old continues to be difficult, fall is nice, Casper is big enough to really understand stuff (not just whiskey.)

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behavioral issues

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:21:56 GMT

Both kids are having vastly different issues right now.

( Read more... )

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Things Need to Change

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:30:26 GMT

I feel like I have been really struggling lately, and need to make some changes.
1. I have a bottle of my antidepressant in my purse now, so if I didn't take it in the morning, I can take it when I brush my teeth at work.
2. mr. flea agreed to try a radically early bedtime for the kids. They are SO TIRED, and yet we cannot seem to get them to sleep before 9:30 pm (despite starting the going to bed process at 8). And Dillo (like me) wakes up super-early even if he is still tired, and Casper has to get up at 6:45 during the week for school and usually can't sleep in on weekends because Dillo is up. So we're going to start bedtime at 7pm today, brush teeth and jammies and pull the blinds in their room and read stories. Maybe turn the light off and read the last story with a flashlight, to cool them (mostly Dillo) down even further?
3. I really really need to start getting some exercise. I wake up sore and stiff in the night. I need to find a yoga class and GO and to hell with the fact that I have no free time. There is a $5 class on Tuesday nights, but it runs 7-8:30 and that would live mr. flea with solo bedtime two nights in a row, since I work Wednesdays. Really, a Sunday would be ideal. In this town, so many people have flexible schedules that there isn't much yoga available on weekends, so I may have to suck it up and do a $14 class.

Hopefully these three things will help me feel better. Right now I am feeling tired of life.

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Could this be a busier week?

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:19:58 GMT

Sunday night Casper cricked her neck and was in terrible pain and up several times in the night. I thought small children were supposed to be like unto elastic bands, but perhaps she is getting decrepit at her advanced age of 7. She stayed home Monday with mr. flea "working from home" (=watching Harry Potter IV.)

Tuesday night had some issues (Dillo woke up needing to pee - why do my children not wake up and take themselves to urinate in the night? Instead they cry loudly half awake and the parents must rescue them and deposit them on the potty. Both of them do this. Is it me?? Anyway Dillo made so much noise it woke Casper and she freaked out about her neck and spent the night in my bed, again.) Then when we went to take Dillo we found he'd had a nosebleed in his sleep. Sheets and mattress pad into the wash. Casper got off to school okay; Dillo too (and reported that the big blood-booger in his nose, named "Bloody," natch, came out at school.) mr. flea got a last-minute invite to a social event for work, and went, so I dealt with dinner and bathtime solo.

This morning Dillo had a nosebleed at 4:30. Sheets and mattress pad into the wash, again. I had randomly missed 3 hours of work in the last week (2 hours after Dillo refused to go back to school after his dentist appointment last week, and one hour dealing with Casper Monday morning) so I came in at 10 and will be here until 10pm. Joy.

Thursday we need to grocery shop and prep for the weekend and it's trash night and a bath night and we have the farmer's market pickup and... that's all, I think.

Friday is Bike to School Day, and a parent coffee until 8:30, after which I must dash to a meeting at work at 9, so maybe we will drive and not bike to school. At the parent coffee I hope to corral some parents into making Girl scouts happen. I emailed the PTO list asking for volunteers at 11:30 am today and have had no response yet. Very worried. Oh and it's FACT (Families and Children Together) day for 2nd grade, but I really cannot make it to school to spend time in Casper's class on Friday (see above: parent coffee and 9am meeting); must remember to ask mr. flea if he can.

Friday night we've been invited to cocktails with the Classics faculty (5:30-7) and a baby shower for mr. flea's coworker (7pm) and have not yet secured a babysitter. We are deeply incompetent about babysitters.

Saturday at 10am is the birthday party, so some cakes need to be baked and frosted at some point, and all the other assorted things associated with a birthday party (like PLATES and DRINKS and maybe FAVORS remember my birthday party paralysis, people?)

Then we're going camping. Which needs its own separate planning and organizing (but I really really needs to get out and it will be good to do). And then back Monday in time to catch Casper's makeup dance class at 5:30 and grocery shop for the week.

Have I mentioned I dismantled the dining room table to refinish it on Sunday? We've mostly eaten in the living room or on stools in the kitchen. The polycrylic is rather harder to get off than I'd anticipated, but I have only one coat of tung oil left on the table base and I am hoping to set it up with the spare leaves so we'll have some flat surface to work with by next week.

I hope next week is much less eventful.

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Yadda Yadda

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:46:00 GMT

We moved the kids into one room this weekend, assembling the bunkbeds for the first time in this house. Bedtime is going okay - still too late. We've started with music at lights out (the Bernstein recording of Peter and the Wolf) which is helping. One problem is mr. flea is reading the crux of Harry Potter IV, and Dillo is bored by it. When he'd done I'd like to try reading to both of them together, whether in bed (chapter books with few pictures) or out on the couch. I think an "extra" birthday present for Casper (turning 7 on Saturday) will be an itty bitty book light so she can look at books after Dillo falls asleep. The other room (Casper's) is the playroom; I'd like to move the yellow futon couch in there for reading and snuggling.

It was Curriculum Night at school last night, so we had a more formal introduction to PreK and 2nd grade. Honestly, because of his home socialization and book-reading and his Montessori daycare, Dillo pretty much has all the skills they seek to instill in PreK: deal with others without hitting or messing with people; understand how books work; know letters and numbers. He accurately read "P E Z" on a pez dispenser last night. His fine motor work is weaker; we need to do more drawing projects, maybe while Casper does homework.

Casper is doing reading in a group with Mrs. H, in another classroom (they mix them up for reading time). She is with Nathaniel, who was in her class last year. She brought home guided reading books for the first time this week, and read them to me okay (reluctantly). Her homework often consists of "read for 30 minutes" and she says she does this at afterschool, but her idea of reading still does not necessarily include actually reading the words in the books. Mr. H, her teacher, said she is doing fine with comprehension and her tendency to guess at words based on context and first letter is a useful skill (this drives me nuts when we read together - I am constantly saying "look at the letters.")

Mrs. U, who is a parent whom I like, is the Spectrum (gifted) teacher for 2nd grade this year, and they are doing recommendations and re-testing this month. mr. flea wants to recommend Casper. You may recall she was tested but narrowly missed the cutoff in K; her increased maturity and test-taking skills (she did fine on the CRCT) should help her this time. I think if it were me I wouldn't bother recommending her again, but mr. flea feels strongly about this.

She's a little down about school right now and I'm not sure why. Complains she doesn't want to go in the morning; told me she doesn't want to do writing and puts her head down on the desk (which Mr. H did not mention.)

After school is still poking along; apparently they are interviewing new directors this week. I signed the kids up for a Spanish class at after school, taught by UGA students, that will start in a couple of weeks and run for a month. No word on Tae Kwan Do, though Casper asks about it. Dillo says after school "takes so long" so I really hope they get a director who does stuff with the kids so they are not so bored..

I called the Girl Scouts last week but they never called me back. Don't they know how hard it is for me to make phone calls, dammit?

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Gearing up for "Fall"

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:42:58 GMT

Never mind that we've been in the near-100-degree range for the past week and are forecast to continue this - fall's around the corner! It's Dillo's last week at day care and Casper's last week of camp. Sunday mr. flea's parents come for a week, with them doing some child care and us alternating partial days off so they don't get too frazzled by 4 year old antics. August 3 we have a PreK orientation and August 5 it's school open house where we find out teacher assignments, and then the following Monday school starts.

We've got to do something about the sleep situation - these last couple of weeks we've overslept a lot and ended up late for our morning routine (only by 15 minutes at most, but nearly every day.) And when school starts that wakeup time needs to ratchet back half an hour, since the bell rings at 7:45, which means leaving the house at 7:35 if we drive and 7:15 if we walk, which I'd like to start doing, with our neighbors. I've been sleeping badly, partly because of the heat. Last night is an excellent example: Dillo went down late (9:30) even though it was the weekend. mr. flea found and killed a roach crawling on him in bed at 11:30, so I was awake for some time after that imagining roaches crawling on me, and listening to Dillo cough (he has a little cold) downstairs. Also it was 83 in our bedroom, which is about as cool as it gets when it's 98 outside all day (THIS is why we wanted a metal roof). Then Dillo woke up and wanted me and came into our bed, so I kept getting woken by him wiggling, and ended up sleeping across the foot of the bed (mr. flea had removed to the couch.)

I don't think things are going to get much better until it cools off and starts getting dark sooner.

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Standardized test results

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:57:11 GMT

We got a letter with Casper's results on the CRCT last night. There were three sections: math, reading, and language. To meet the standard you had to get an 800; 850 or more is considered exceeding the standard. Casper got a 825 in reading, so solidly middle of the standard. She got an 846 in language, near the top of the standard, and an 851 in math, just exceeding the standard. I'm interested by these results in that they do seem to track very closely to what I observe of her abilities in these three areas. So maybe the CRCT is about to accurately assess some kids, anyway. I am pretty sure they are dropping it for 1st and 2nd graders next year, as a cost-cutting measure, and I can't say I'm sorry.

We had a really hard night with Casper last night - devolving into asking to come to work with me today (promising to be really good!). And then we had a hard morning with Dillo this morning. Both kids are tired. I hope like heck we can get them to sleep in this weekend, since we are so spectacularly failing to get them to bed at a reasonable hour. Oh, the woes of June in our latitude, when it's light from before 6am to nearly 9pm.

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night routine

Mon, 31 May 2010 01:50:37 GMT

Casper goes to sleep with the curtains open, because she likes to look out the window and up into the big magnolia tree silhouetted against the dusky sky. She looks for shapes and faces in the voids between the leaves.

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too much going on

Thu, 06 May 2010 14:24:23 GMT

I've got enough going on right now that I'm a little overwhelmed and paralyzed with it. I'm also really tired; I worked last night and had trouble falling asleep (was the sweet tea at lunch super-potent?)

We did get the license plates and registration transferred to the new car yesterday, so we are officially completely done with car stuff. We are still deep in the bathroom plumbing project (plumbing is done, but closing up the wall in the bedroom is next, and then we need to deal with taking down and replacing the ceiling in the downstairs bathroom), and we still need to decide what to do about the roof and porch projects we got estimates for. I have been doing more research on the house and that is interesting but also distracting me at work.

At work I am giving a presentation to a staff organization the week of May 17, and then giving a talk at a state conference May 28, and neither of those things are fully developed yet, and I'm having trouble getting them developed, due to inability to focus. Part of the problem is that I could totally wing the first, if I chose, and sections of the second (demonstrating a software which I have already trained groups on 3 times and written up a training manual). I need something to give me the urgency to nail it all down.

I am going to SF next Thursday and need to plan my packing & hem my dress, do some further planning for while I'm there, and worry about how everyone will manage without me (fine, of course, but I still need to worry!) SF-istas, my current plan is to visit the Asian Art Museum the afternoon of Thursday May 13, and would welcome a companion, and I have most of the day Friday May 14 unplanned, though I may want to sleep late. I've never been to Golden Gate Park, but wonder if that is too big a project given transport issues and my potential tiredness.

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Pump It Up & Dillo's Development

Tue, 04 May 2010 17:17:31 GMT

Last night we went to Pump It Up, which is a local inflatable stuff birthday party emporium. It was our neighbor S's 5th birthday. The kids both had a great time, and Dillo was quite game, compared to the last time we were at Pump It Up (18 months ago), when he hid his face in my shirt for an hour.

This morning Dillo said to me: "Owen [our neighbor/his nemesis] pushed me down and I didn;t even cry or come to you!"

Such a big boy, such a difference a year has made.

In less fun news, we had a talk in the car with him this morning about the absolute disaster bedtime has become. I can take incessant pee OR bedtime battles, but I am not having both.

(Note old baby icon. Possibly I should make some new icons. Darn that baby was a cutie, though.)

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turning me up sweet

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:30:43 GMT

I spent a lot of this past weekend being angry at Dillo. This is a mark of my immaturity as much as his, I quickly add; he was just being a 3 year old boy, and a fairly easygoing one at that, but I was in no mood for endless snuggles and hands down the shirt and "play with me!" and energy. Sunday night was especially trying; he ate almost no dinner, ran about, took a bath pretty cooperatively, but then ran around the house naked and deliberately peed on the floor, and thought it was very funny indeed. I got to put him to bed and lie next to him as he said, "I'm hungry," over and over again until he fell asleep.

I went to bed angry at him and it was hot upstairs and first the ceiling squirrels and then Food, Inc. on Tivo woke me up, and I had to put the bathroom vent fan on to cool things down, and I finally fell asleep at about 11.

At 3am I awoke to crying in the living room. It was poor brave Dillo, armed with a flashlight, shaking with cold and fear and crying, "Mommy! Where are you?" Usually I'd have woken at the first real cry of his, but due to the fan I'd slept on. He'd peed in his bed and woken cold and wet. He climbed out of bed and turned on the light in his room (as he explained to me, because hew as "a little bit scared,") and accidentally peed a bunch more on the floor. (I guess he is well-hydrated.) I still didn't come so he got his flashlight and turned it on and came to find me. Such a brave scared little boo! I wiped his snotty nose and got him dry pants and praised him for knowing just what to do when there was a crisis in the night and I didn't come, and for being so brave, and installed him in my bed, where he quickly went back to sleep. Such a darling.

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