Winter fun

We had the perfect snow last night - soft, fluffy, and sticky.  Perfect for sledding, especially since we had just purchased some new snow toys at Target clearance prices.  Most importantly, we bought 2 pseudo-snowboards that Ellie was itching to try out on our little sledding hill.  So today, we bundled up and trudged across the street to the hill.  Ellie put her boots in the snowboard and took off like she had been doing it for years.  I think we found her special skill!

Her friend Noah was a natural pro as well.  It did not come naturally to the adults; there were a lot of falls.  It actually took the kids telling us how to do it, mostly bending our knees, before we could achieve any success at all.  

Wait, I still have a blog??

Our "normal" is ever-changing.  Each semester is different, each summer is different, nothing is ever the same for too long.  Right now our basic family schedule looks like this:

Sunday - Jason works, possibly all day.  Kirsten works at church 9am - 12pm (kids go to Sunday school)

Monday - Kirsten works 6am-??  Ellie and Rowan have school 8:25am - 1:45pm.  Jason works 3pm -  8pm

Tuesday - Ellie and Rowan have school 8:25am - 3:17pm.  Violet has school 8:45am - 12:45pm.  Kirsten works at church 9am-11am.  Jason works 3pm - 8pm.

Wednesday - Kirsten works 6am - ??  Ellie and Rowan have school 8:25am - 3:17pm.  Jason works 3pm - 8pm

Thursday - Ellie and Rowan have school 8:25am - 3:17pm.  Violet has school 8:45am - 12:45pm.  Kirsten in Rowan's classroom/lunch room 9:15am - 12:30pm.  Jason works 3pm - 8pm

Friday - Kirsten works 6am - ?? Ellie and Rowan have school 8:25am - 3:17pm

Saturday - Jason works 8:30am - 5pm

Whew!  This does not include swimming lessons on Thursday evenings for the older two or Ellie's after school M/W Spanish class.  Is it any wonder I have nightmares about thinking it is the wrong day of the week and forgetting to pick up or drop off kids?

Ellie is in second grade at our neighborhood elementary school.  We met her teacher before school started and she seems wonderful for Ellie.  All of the classes at their school are dual grades - K/1, 2/3, 4/5.  The move from K/1 to 2/3 is a bigger adjustment than I realized.  The kids are given a lot more responsibility, and a lot less "play" time.  And the teacher doesn't seem to feel the need to communicate as much with the parents (plus the teachers don't escort the classes out of the building after school), so I'm not really sure how she is doing in school.  We have conferences in November, but that seems so far into the school year for me.  Ellie says she is doing fine, except for some friend issues that we are trying to work on with her.  Ugh, in so many ways homeschooling was good for us, but right now we just can't do it.  But it is not out of the question for the future :)  Ellie does truly love reading, and she reminds me of myself in that aspect.  She is even reading my old fiction favorite, The Babysitter's Club.  When she is not at school, she can usually be found reading at home, creating artistic projects such as plays, drawings, or adding on to her homemade dollhouse (made from various recycled scraps).  Or outside biking, roller-blading, or playing barbies with her friends.

Rowan started Kindergarten this year.  Luckily I am able to volunteer in his classroom every week, so I get to see him in action, at least during their "reader's workshop" time.  The classroom is set up in stations during this time and groups of kids rotate stations every 15 minutes or so.  I get to help out usually at one station, or I will follow some of the younger ones to a couple of the stations.  I really like his teacher, but I'm sure a big part of the reason I like her is because she communicates with us so often.  Plus she likes to chat after school at pick-up :)  Rowan is doing really well.  The first week or two were a little rough.  He had a hard time at drop-off a couple of times and accidentally was left behind outside after recess once, but that was because Ellie comes out to recess right after him and he wanted to stay with her.  But now he is completely settled in and willingly marches into the school, puts his stuff in his locker, and starts his activities inside his classroom.  He no longer clings to me when I volunteer in his class.  So now I get to observe how well he is improving with reading and writing.  And I've heard stories from his teacher about his crazy abilities in math (she said she was testing him the first week to find out his math level and finally just stopped going further because he was getting sick of it and wanted to go play).  When he is not at school, he usually be found outside playing in the sandbox or engaging in adventures (which usually include sticks and buckets of sand running all around our buildings) with his friends.  When he is inside, he is usually playing legos, wooden blocks, or mario figures - or playing mario on the wii.  While he was previously out-eaten by both his sisters at almost every meal, he just recently is starting to eat a lot more.  I sense a growth-spurt coming on :)

Violet - at newly two - is growing in leaps and bounds.  It seems that once we decided to enroll her in our beloved family preschool, she decided that she better start acting like a preschooler.  She is now daytime potty-trained (besides the occasional accident of course).  She loves to run and jump and climb and do everything else her older siblings do.  Her vocabulary has quadrupled in the past month.  And she is so, so funny.  Violet has the most amazing facial expressions and voice inflections that add another dimension to everything she says.  She absolutely loves going to school with her Diego lunchbox every Tuesday and Thursday morning.  Ask her who she goes to school with and she will name off at least half of her classmates.  Not once has she been hesitant for me to leave her there, which is a big change from less than one year ago!  She also LOVES going to our neighbors' houses and will often ask, "I go to Nina house?  I go to Pa house?"  Jason recently took her to her 2-year check-up and she ranks in the 80th% for height (36 in.) and the 40th% for weight (26 lbs), which puts her at the 15th% for weight-for-length.  Definitely our most petite child.  She will most often be found playing with board game pieces, reading books, or playing with toy animals or dolls.  She also begs to play outside and play in the sandbox or run around with her friends.

Jason is currently working at a telephone survey company, which is a temp job while he hunts for a career job.  That job is okay for now, and is a benefit for us because it is so flexible, but it also has been a little difficult because they sometimes have a week of no work in between projects.  Jason has discovered a possible dream job and is trying to get into the police force.  After starting the application and testing process at a couple different locations, he has decided to focus on this area for now (basically within driving distance of Madison).  His Ph.D. is still in the works, although put to a rudely abrupt pause by his school committee.  We are hoping that they cooperate to enable him to officially finish by December.  When he is not working, he can be found at the gym, on the computer, in the kitchen, or on the floor playing with the kids.

My job at the cupcake shop is going well.  I work MWF at 6am, until I am done basically.  My weekly hours depend on how many cake pop orders are placed for that week.  I make on average probably 300-400 cake pops a week, but sometimes I have large orders of hundreds of cake pops for events or celebrations.  In fact tomorrow I need to make 400 cake pops for an order, and I just finished an order for 200 wedding cake pops.  I love that I am able to be at the school on Thursdays, which includes working in the lunch room so I get to see both of my elementary kids (plus all the neighbor kids that I check up on).  I also enjoy being able to pick up the kids from school each day, since I rarely was able to do that with Ellie last year.  If I am not at work, you can usually find me outside pretending to watch my kids play, while on my kindle fire or chatting with neighbors :)

Mini vacation with maximum heat

 Written July 17, 2012

Jason and I have been hoping to make it to Milwaukee sometime this summer, but with our work schedules being so opposite, we couldn't really find a time to go.  Well, it just so happened that both of our work places are very slow this week, so our hours were cut, making it finally possible.  We wish it wasn't so incredibly hot, but we had to grab this chance.  The kids were sooo excited when we told them we were going to stay in a hotel in Milwaukee.  As with any trip, there were pros and cons.

Pros:

  - The kids were awesome in the car.  The 1 1/2 hour trip flew by with the kids reading or playing quietly on the way up and then sleeping or watching a movie on the way back.  

  - The deal we got was amazing.  We paid $65 for a night in a great hotel, 4 tickets to the zoo, a shuttle ride to the zoo, $40 credit to the hotel restaurant for dinner, one in-room movie (regularly $16.99, isn't that crazy???  Who would pay that?), and free breakfast at the hotel restaurant.  So, we paid $65 for something that usually would be $252.  It made all the money we spent at the zoo a little easier :)  

  - The hotel was really nice.  We enjoyed the indoor pool when we first arrived, and then when we entered our room on the sixth floor, the kids were amazed with the fancy room.  The beds had remotes the adjusted the firmness, but we had no idea how to use them so by morning somehow Rowan ended up in some sort of bowl of a bed.  The view from the sixth floor was amazing.  And the most important aspect of the room (in my opinion) was that the window shades adequately blocked the light from outside and I didn't have to hang blankets from the windows :)  Which leads to the next pro...

  - The kids slept pretty well.  Hotel stays are always iffy with our kids, because they are all used to sleeping alone in dark, quiet rooms.  Although they went to bed a little late, they all slept through the night 

  - The zoo was a lot of fun.  We love the Madison zoo (especially since it is free!), but the Milwaukee zoo is much bigger with a lot more animals and more activities.  It was so fun to see Violet ooh and ahh over every animal.  There was a lot of shade cover and indoor exhibits, which was important with this extreme heat we are experiencing.

Arriving at the zoo.  We came prepared with lots of cold/frozen water and cold/frozen snacks

Violet was enthralled with the animals

Ellie and I rode on the ski lift over the zoo

Our view from the lift - Violet was not happy for me to be up there

Cons:

- When I said the kids slept through the night, I forgot about one incident.  A pretty bad one.  Without getting into the disgusting details, let's just say that one of the kids got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and I'm pretty sure that he/she was still sleeping, because he/she went on the floor of the bathroom.  And he/she must have had a stomach problem.  And he/she must have woken up because I discovered him/her trying to clean it up.  Probably the worst mess I've ever cleaned up in my 7 years of motherhood.

- Did I mention the heat?  It was in the upper 90s, which is pretty unbearable with humidity.  We only stayed at the zoo until about 2pm because of it.

- I totally wiped out on our walk through the parking lot to enter the zoo.  Since I was holding Violet when I fell, I had to do some crazy body twisting to spare her life, plus I had no available hands to catch myself.  It was pretty painful and embarrassing, but luckily it only left me with two bloody knees and two bloody elbows - nothing broken.  If you recall, this is not the first time I have injured myself while holding Violet during a fall.  I'm glad she walks by herself most of the time now, or who knows what injuries would be in my future.

Anyone want an update?

One of my dear sisters gently admonished me for neglecting this blog.  I admit that it is much easier and faster to do all my updates and pictures on Facebook.  However, the biggest problem with Facebook is that it is not as easy to go back and see old posts.  I really love going back and looking at old blog posts.  So maybe this will put me back on track to keep up with the updates.  For now, just a quick update on each family member.

Jason - He has two really busy jobs right now.  One of them is taking care of the kids, especially during the hours that I am away working.  In addition, he is working hard on revising his dissertation, and he is on track to graduate with his Ph.D. this May.  After that?  Who knows.  Jason is searching out and applying for jobs, so really we could be anywhere in the country after graduation.  In what free time he has, he experiments in the kitchen making healthy food - mostly for himself, but the big successes he shares with us :)

Kirsten - The majority of my time is spent with kids - mine and others entrusted to my care :)  I currently have 3 part-time jobs that I truly love.  Here is the breakdown of hours per week - 26 hours spent nannying for a wonderful family (8 of those hours - Tues/Thurs - at our house), 2-5 hours at a church nursery, and 8-16 hours making cake pops at a cupcake shop (or 25 hours in the week before valentine's day).  The only way I am able to work all these hours, and still feel connected to my family, is with the flexibility of all three jobs.  With the cake pop job, I chose what hours I wanted to work, with most of them being early, early morning.  The two childcare jobs welcome me bringing any or all of my own kids, which is really nice.  Violet always comes with me to the church and I usually bring her to my nanny job one day per week.  Keeping up with household work has been a bit of a struggle, but we're starting to get the hang of it.  Often I will bring my dinner materials to my nanny job to get a head start on making dinner, so I'm not scrambling when I get home.  Because usually Violet latches on to me and won't let me go until bedtime, and that makes the dinner prepwork difficult.

Ellie - Most of her time now is spent at school.  Of course we have feelings about this, both positive and negative, but one of the most important factors is that she is happy.  She loves school and is doing really well there.  She has school lunch pretty much every day and we often go to breakfast there as well, and she absolutely loves having school food.  Ellie is a pretty adventurous eater, so the variety excites her.  Right now she is also taking a theater class that she enjoys.  Her free time is spent making up art projects, playing with dolls and toy animals, and playing fighting with Rowan.  She has dramatic mood swings right now; extremely helpful and loving one minute, and then dramatically angry and emotional the next.  Is age 6 the new 13???

Rowan - He attends preschool (the same one we've been using and love) every weekday this year for 4K - for free because Madison started public 4K this year and contracted it out to preschools.  I thought we would have difficult mornings trying to convince him to go to school, because he really enjoys staying home, but he happily goes to school every day and enjoys himself.  When he is home he spends a lot of time playing games on the computer or wii, and the rest of the time asking to play :)  He just finished taking a parent/child exploratory art class that he really enjoyed, and he'll be starting a swimming class near the end of March (as will Ellie and Violet).  Right now he prefers Jason to take care of all his needs, and the other day he said to me, "How about in our family, the boys take care of the boys and the girls take care of the girls." 

Violet - Ah, the ever-changing toddler.  She seems to learn new words every day.  Right now her absolute favorite thing to do is have Jason or I read her books, about 50 a day.  50 times each.  Animal books are what interest her most, as she enjoys pointing out each animal and the sound it makes.  Violet still complains (and often has to be forcibly removed from my body) whenever I leave the house, but she is usually happy and fine with Jason once I'm gone.  She certainly has learned from her big brother and big sister, and she knows how to work a room.  If everyone laughs, she laughs loudly too, even if she doesn't know why.  If someone does something she doesn't like, she will give them a pouty evil eye.  At minimum.  She also is not above screaming or throwing a fit to get what she wants.  But she knows that she simply has to grab my arm, pull, and say, "come" for me to follow her to find what she wants.

Dig and Save

Dig and Save is a dream for:

- people who have time, but no money

- crafters who want cheap material

- hoarders

Dig and Save is a nightmare for:

- people with allergies

- germaphobes

- someone looking for a specific clothing item

- short people

My new favorite place in town is a St. Vincents branch called Dig and Save.  The other branches around the city take the items that aren't selling, pack them up in GIANT boxes, and send them to the Dig and Save.  At the Dig and Save, everything is extremely cheap.  There is a lot of junk, but also a lot of treasures.  Furniture is cheap.  Most everything else is $1 per pound.  One room is filled with furniture and miscellaneous items, and the other room is filled with the GIANT boxes of clothes and linens.  These boxes are huge cubes, probably 4 feet on each side.  Which means the boxes come up to my chest.  And it is practically impossible to get into the bottom of the box, unless you climb in the box (which I have seen people do).  I reach as far down as I can as I dig through the clothes, but I usually don't get all the way to the bottom of the box.  Unless I see something promising, then I might tip myself over the side of the box, feet off the ground and bottom in the air, to grab it.

Finding things there can be a lot of work.  The clothes are not organized at all.  I just dig and dig and pick out my own treasures.  But I do find treasures.  Like these -

Ellie's pants and sweater from my most recent trip



Hanna Andersson shirts for Rowan and Violet



Everything else - matching brown cords for Jason and I; four shirts and snow pants for me; a dress and pants and outfit for Violet; and pajama pants, jean skirt, and shorts for Ellie.  Plus 6 wool sweaters for crafting.



 And the price for all of these good-quality clothes?  $9.68.   CRAZY, right??  I spent almost 2 hours there, but it was well worth it.  Madison folks, don't say I never told you ;)



Same genes, different results

In some ways, our three children are similar to each other.  They all look somewhat alike, they all hate road trips, and they all love climbing on daddy.  But in other ways, they are very, very different.  For example, Jason and I often put the kids to bed and take the monitor to the neighbors' house.  We can hear if any of the kids make any noises and we run up the stairs to our apartment if we hear them.  But sometimes, if the older ones are quiet, we might not hear them get up and use the bathroom.  A few times they have found no one home and cried, so we come right up and reassure them that we are nearby and listening. However, the last three times that each of them woke up at night, they had three very different reactions:

Ellie - She woke up to use the bathroom and discovered that no one was in the living room.  She walked around the house silently, saw that no one was there, and went back to her room to quietly cry herself back to sleep (I know it's heartbreaking; we had a talk about her talking to us in the monitor if she wakes up and we will come right back).

Rowan -  He woke up, noticed that no one was here, and decided to take advantage of the opportunity.  So, he silently went into the kitchen, dragged a chair to the corner of the room, climbed up onto the counter, reached into the very top corner of a cabinet, and pulled out a box of cookies.  After eating two of the cookies at the kitchen table, he went into the living room and played quietly until Jason returned home and found him there. 

Violet - If she wakes up during the night, she cries until someone comes and gives her a drink and puts her back to bed.  There is no way we would not hear her wake up!

A new normal

Things are a little different in the Tatum household this year.  We now have a stay-at-home dad and a working mom.  It's not too difficult of a change for us as we have been slowly transitioning for the last two years.  Last year Jason was working, but mostly from home.  This summer Jason worked part-time from home.  I have always worked part-time, some out of the home and some childcare at home.  When we decided to stay here for the year, part of that decision included me finding a job that would supply enough income for our family.  I looked into nanny jobs that supplied a huge income (huge for us), but also required long hours.  But then the perfect job just popped up - from Facebook no less.  I knew my time on Facebook was productive!  So now I am taking care of three very sweet children for a great friend, and it really is the perfect "job" for our family.  It is only 30 hours a week, but with that and my job in the church nursery we are able to make it work financially.  But the best part of the job (besides the wonderful family I work with) is that it is super flexible - I can bring any of my kids at any time and two of the days of the week I only watch their youngest at our house.  So I am only away from the kids for about 20 hours a week.  Everyone is adjusting wonderfully so far, even Violet, who previously would barely let me out of her sight.  And Jason (who is also finishing up his dissertation) has jumped with both feet into staying at home; he even cooks delicious lunches for the kids!  Speaking of the kids... 

Violet is more toddler and less baby every day.  She is walking short distances, but not full-on toddling yet.  This little one definitely has an opinion about everything, and she isn't afraid to show it!  Although she is making more defined babbles and some noises that sound like they might be words, her preferred method of communication is screeching.  She loves putting her toys away, how do I encourage that to continue?

Rowan is attending 4K (pre-kindergarten).  This is the first year that our city offers free, public 4K, and the school district is contracting out spots to many of the preschools (including our neighborhood preschool that both older kids have attended and we love).  So, he is able to go play at his school every morning for free, and he loves it.  He is also loving playing in the sandbox outside with friends and spotting words that he can read around town.  After this month of last minute summer fun, there have been several days when he told us, "This is the best day ever!"  One of those days was spent at a circus museum that puts on daily circus shows during the summer and now I'm pretty sure he wants to be a clown someday. 

And Ellie.  Ellie truly is growing up.  Physically, she is growing so tall and beautiful (especially with her new toothless gap!).  And her personality is just so sweet, sensitive, and outgoing.  That's not to say that she doesn't have her sour moments, because she certainly does.  Jason is homeschooling her for first grade this year, and she really is enjoying it.  Her school work takes one hour or less each day and the rest of her day is spent playing, creating, or organizing activities for Jason and I to join her in.  Right now one of her favorite things to do is play art class, which consists of either Jason or I being the student and she creates an art project for us to work on. 

In summary, things are going well for the Tatums.  Now we just have to figure out a new housework routine, because right now no one is claiming responsibility for the bathrooms.  Yuck!

Would you like to go for a run with me?

We have decided to stay another year in Madison, mostly because of friends and opportunities here, but also because it is just plain beautiful.  Yes, even in winter :)  Would you like to see the sights I enjoy as I run in the evenings after the kids are in bed?  Our neighborhood is especially gorgeous during the summer.