Family Update--Why I've Been MIA

I miss the days when I had lots of time to blog, because I've been feeling like my poor site is terribly neglected these days. There's a lot going on lately, and even though I made myself a list of topics to write about, finding the time to actually do it is something else.

Where have I been? Here, there and everywhere.

**At the gym--We recently joined the Y, and now my whole week revolves around making sure I get there to exercise. The reasons for this are two-fold. Number one, we're paying for the membership, so that motivates me to go and use the facility. Number two, now that I have someone to watch the kids (childcare is included with the membership fee), exercising is that much easier. Let's face it, exercising at home is nearly impossible. When both kids are awake, they wait until I'm really getting into a good groove. Then someone poops her pants, or they fight over toys or someone needs a snack or someone falls down and bonks their head. If Maureen is sleeping, Johnny usually wants to do a craft, or watch a video, and we only have the one DVD player. Plus, as much as I love Leslie Sansone, I can only do the same video so many times and listen to her talk about how great God is before I want to throw my running shoes through the TV.

Since we joined the gym, I've been trying to go as often as possible. I'm determined to lose some weight, do something about my triceps and maybe even wear a bikini this summer. For that reason, if you come over, I'll probably be wearing my workout clothes. I've found that doing as much housework as possible the night before, then getting up before the kids to shower and dressing immediately in workout shorts and tank top increases my chances of fitting in my workout. Plus, you know what? Exercising makes me feel good. And when I feel good, I'm a better mom.

**At the doctor--Maureen is scheduled for her eye surgery at the end of May, and she has four pre-op appointments for various exams and measurements before then. Plus we've had dental appointments in there, and John has been getting acupuncture for his leg injury (this one, which Western medicine has been unable to improve after a year). Between the gym, the doctor and preschool, I feel like I spend half my time in the car.

**Outside--Just a few weeks ago, it was rainy and cold. Then Mother Nature played a nasty trick on us. Not only has it been July-like hot this week, but all the trees are pollinating and there is yellow scum everywhere. Such as in my eyes and up my nose, causing me severe distress, and leading me to call my eye doctor and beg him shamelessly for a prescription eye drop that will relieve the itching without destroying my contacts. I also put away all my winter fleece and black sweaters and got out all my black tank tops and exercise shorts. The kids could care less about the pollen though, and want to be outside all the time. Do they care that their mother's sinuses look like a swamp? Nooooooo........of course not.

**At the &%#$ grocery store--Johnny has been eating. Constantly. All. The. Freaking. Time. So I'm always at the store because we're always out of something. I haven't posted a menu plan recently, and I don't know if I'm going to continue, because the only one who seems to respond to them these days is Toni anyway. There are ongoing discussions about groceries and money and being frugal at the Frugal Moms group at Baltimore MomsLikeMe. If you're a mom in Baltimore, you should check out the site.

**Gritting my teeth over sibling rivalry--I have a low tolerance for certain kinds of noise. Such as repeated banging and high pitched screeching. So how did I end up with one child who bangs everything and another who screeches when she doesn't get her way? I thought I had reached my breaking point one day last week, when they were each in possession of identical John Deere tractors, but crying because they each wanted the one the other had. Despite the fact that they were the exact same damn toy. I brought up the topic in the parents group at school, and got some great feedback and a book recommendation. But part of what has improved is the reminder that all siblings have some sort of rivalry, it's part of being a family. And when I observe my two, they really are close. If I try to separate them when the screeching and banging gets to be too much, they cry. They like being together, they like arguing over toys. It's me who has the problem. So I'm coping by stepping back and giving them a chance to work it out on their own. As long as no one is getting hurt, the most they're going to get from me is, "There are two of you and one firetruck. What do you think you should do about it?" or, "Maureen, I see that you are upset that Johnny took your toy. Stop screeching and go take it back. Nicely." Boom. Done.

**Buying expensive specialty food for my beastly cat--Remember poor Jameson in his pretty blue E-collar? His wounds got worse, so I ended up taking him to work with me one night, where he embarrassed me mightily. He let me take his temperature and clip his nails all by myself, but when the time came for his exam, he freaked out and started growling and lunging and hissing and trying to bite. I couldn't touch him. My own cat, and I couldn't touch him. I'm surprised his head didn't start spinning around, he was that scary. It took an elephant's dose of sedative to knock him down, and then he sat up, wide awake, in the middle of a skin biopsy and bit the doctor. My boss. How mortifying. And now I can no longer say, "He's cage aggressive, but he's never bitten anyone!"

Anyway, the skin biopsy and all his other labs were fine, so he just has a food allergy. That means I had to switch him to a grain-free canned food, and let me tell you, it ain't cheap. I tried a couple of brands to make sure he tolerated them okay, then bought a case of it. When the cashier told me how much it was, I nearly fainted. So Jameson needs a job, to help pitch in with the expenses associated with his care. Anyone in need of a watch cat?

So that's it. Nothing very exciting, but definitely time consuming. I'm hoping to be around more soon, but in the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy the guest bloggers I have lined up to fill in the blanks.

Hands Full

In January of this year, when Nadya Suleman delivered eight babies conceived via in vitro fertilization, she also ignited a firestorm of controversy. The questions kept piling up. Should single women be offered fertility treatments? Should an unemployed woman with no means of support be allowed to have children? Does it count as infertility if you already have six children? Should the doctor be prosecuted for being unethical? Did the Octo-Mom have plastic surgery to make her look like Angelina Jolie? What the heck does her stomach look like after being stretched by eight babies at one time?

Regardless of what I think of Suleman and her choices, one criticism stood out above the rest to me, and that was about the size of the family she had before the octuplets were even conceived.

More than one person expressed the opinion that Suleman was "crazy" to already have six kids and "even crazier" to want more. Many compared her to "serial adoptive mom" Angelina Jolie, and I even heard someone call her a "kid collector."

The average American family has 2.4 children. My husband and I have two, and we'll most likely be stopping there, but its not because either of us thinks there is anything wrong with large families. In fact, if we had more time, more money, a larger house, we'd probably have more children.

Shortly after my daughter was born, someone in the neighborhood made the comment that now that we had one of each, it was time to stop. I was amused, because why would someone who barely knows me feel comfortable giving me advice about the size of my family? What if we had planned for more? What if my second child was a boy? Would it then be "okay" to try for a third?

Among our friends, there are couples that are deliberately childless, those that purposely had five children, and many in between. All find themselves regularly being questioned about their choices. In the wake of the Octo-Mom controversy, I'd like to explore the many reasons families make the choices they do, and present some of those scenarios to you. If you are interested in discussing the size of your family and how it came about, please send an email to the address in my sidebar.

Kicking off the discussion is Mommy Mae.


"so you guys are done now, right?" i heard this shortly after my twins were born 7 years ago.

my answer was, "no way. we're only halfway there."

(cue the googly eyes.)

i have 4 kids.

on purpose.

this isn't a surprise to anyone who knows me. i've always wanted 4 kids. my husband and i came from families of 3 kids where we are the middle children. we didn't want a middle child. that's the long and short of it. we wanted an even number of kids and 2 wasn't enough.

of course, with having twins, my son will say he's the middle child, so i'm screwed anyway. plus, he's the only boy.

my goal was to have 4 kids by the time i was 30. i was 31 when my last was born. this was the only change from our original plan. after we had the twins, we decided to wait 4 years before having any more so that we wouldn't have 3 kids in college at the same time. our son is not allowed to be a genius and start college early.

we were lucky enough to get pregnant as soon as we wanted to all 3 times. my grandma, who had 6 kids, once said, "your grandpa would put his shoes under the bed and i'd get pregnant." i guess it runs in the family.

i get the odd comment here and there about my large brood, but it doesn't bother me. i think i'm immune to the snide comments because i genuinely don't care what people have to say about me and my family size. i'm like a duck that way.

when i told my sister i was pregnant (on the phone and not in a text message like when she has big news. wtf?!?) she said, "oh no! are you serious?"

"um...hello. this is me we're talking about, sister."

i think she was mostly shocked because my son was only 20 months old at the time. she knew we wanted a lot of kids, but didn't think i'd be crazy enough to have the last 2 so close together. i figured if i can have 2 of them 19 minutes apart, 28 months apart would be a breeze.

it's funny that my sister and other people seem to react so negatively about my clan. i think it says more about them than it does about me.

would i be happy with less kids? that's unfathomable because the 4 of them have been ingrained to our lives so fully. would i be happy with more kids? i don't know about happy, but i'm sure i'd be a little crazier.* well, crazier than i am now.

the most frequent comment i get is "you've got your hands full." interestingly enough, i got the same comment all the time after i had the twins. and as cheesy as it sounds, i always say, "but my heart is full, too. because these 4? man, they rock my world. i never knew love could be so good.

*i'm not implying that people with more kids are crazy. just that i'm pretty sure maximum capacity for me is 4 and i'd go a little nuts if i had more people to manage.

Unanswerable Parenting Question Of The Day: Spilled Milk

The experts all say that you shouldn't chastise your child for spilling their drink. After all, it's just an accident. We've all done it. Why rip into your child for something that was just an accident?

But here's my question:

What if the milk was spilled right after someone told said child, "Stop banging that tractor on the table, you're going to spill your milk." The banging didn't stop, and the milk was spilled. Is it okay to get mad then?

What if the spilled milk was not only on the table and on the floor, but also on the rug underneath the table, all over the pots and pans stored on the lower shelves of the baker's rack, and on the freshly painted baseboards? Is it okay to get mad then?

What if the milk also got all over the Play Doh that was on the table, turning it into slime? What if the milk on the floor proceeded to run all over the uneven rowhome floors into a puddle in the corner, seeping into the cracks between the floorboards in the process? Is it okay to get mad then?

What if it took the mother twenty minutes to clean up all this mess, while listening to the errant child whine, "I want my miiiiilllllkkkkkk, that was miiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnneeeee!" Despite the fact that the child spilled his OWN milk after being told to stop banging? Is it okay to get mad then?

And then when, instead of responding with, "Whoops! Looks like we had a spill!" and cheerfully cleaning it up with a smile on one's face, you instead snap, "Oh COME on! What did I just say?" prompting the four-year-old milk-spiller to burst into tears and run to his room, how do you redeem yourself from feeling like a giant beast?

...Just wondering...

Easter Photos

The Saturday before Easter was rainy and pretty miserable, but Easter Sunday was dry and sunny, if a little on the chilly side.

I tried to get the kids to stand together by the couch, but they are scowling in those pictures. So all I have is these by the front door, where the morning sun is washing them out a little. Maureen's dress looks white, but it's actually lavender.



Maureen and Johnny in church, waiting patiently for the service to start.


Maureen, awaiting the egg hunt after Mass.


We went to John's Aunt Cathy's house for dinner, and she has a nice yard, so the kids spent some time out there.

Hope everyone had a lovely Easter!

Needed: Rain Boots

One of my goals with the kids a long time ago was "get the kids outside everyday, weather permitting."

It's a good goal, but it's been amended to "get Johnny outside. Everyday. Regardless of the weather." The boy has a lot of energy, and if he's stuck in the house all day, everyone is miserable by the end of the day.

It's been raining relentlessly all day today, and by the time I got home from work, Johnny was begging to go out. And since Maureen wants to do everything Johnny does, she went too.



Johnny actually got cold first and asked to come in, but they spent a good hour out there, splashing around and getting muddy, before coming in and going directly to the bathroom. I threw all the clothes, shoes included, into the washing machine.

A little bit of extra laundry is worth it to me to make the evening run a little smoother.

However, I'm looking for rain boots and jackets ASAP.

And also hoping for sun tomorrow...

A Trip To DC And Two Bloggers Meet

Last Thursday, my mom and the kids and I hopped on a train to DC. Johnny was on spring break and I'd had enough of being at home and not doing anything. Plus, my good blogging buddy, Teresa, was in town with her family on vacation! So I said, "Hey, let's meet up!"

The four of us caught the MARC train out of Odenton. The train station was not really a hit with either kid. The express Amtrak trains come through there and when they are the inner track, they are scary! They go whooshing by, they make wind, and they are noisy. Maureen cried, and Johnny clung to me. Johnny was also nervous about me getting too close to the edge and kept pulling me back. When our train finally arrived, Maureen cried and kept saying, "Noooooo....I don't like it!" as we boarded. She finally settled down, but she was pretty quiet for most of the trip. Once in DC, we took the Metro to the Smithsonian and met Teresa, her mom and her kids at the Natural History Museum.

We did the dinosaur bones first, and the kids all thought they were pretty cool.

The bones of a swimming dinosaur.


The skeleton of this Mososaur was so long, I couldn't get it all in the picture.

This looks like a turtle, but it was enormous.

Four of the five kids checking out a reef.

Johnny really liked this whale suspended from the ceiling.


We had lunch at the Museum cafe, which we all thought was expensive. However, the museum is free, so I guess it all works out in the end. Plus, the quality of the food was pretty good, I had a sandwich and shared a salad with my mom and it was fresh and tasty. I was expecting greasy pizza and nothing but fried food.

After lunch, we checked out the bugs and the gemstones. By then, we were all hot and the kids had had enough of being touristy, so we went outside to the mall and sat in the grass.

Here we are!


Maureen was feeling a little shy at first and opted to sit on my mom's lap.


What is it with kids and dirt? Logan, Johnny and Kenzie immediately started to dig.


The monument in the distance.

Maureen started to cheer up a little.

Ella and Maureen make friends.

But she was still not willing to join Teresa's mom, Nancy, and play Ring Around The Rosy with the other four kids.

Popcorn for snack.

Johnny and all three of Teresa's kids really hit it off.

This picture cracks me up! Maureen is screaming and the rest of them are looking at her, except for Logan, who is grinning.

When you tell kids to make mad faces, this is what they do.

And happier faces.

More digging.



Towards the middle of the afternoon, the little ones started to get tired and Maureen retired to her stroller. Our timing was great, because soon after we started collecting out stuff and getting ready to head back to the Metro, Kenzie got dirt in her eye and started to cry, Maureen lost her pacifier and started to cry, and it was general bedlam.

But we did find a minute to ignore the screaming kids and take a picture.


It was so cool to meet Teresa and her family, her mom was so nice and her kids are all wonderful! We had a blast!

Homemaker Vs. SAHM--Does It Really Matter?

Last month, when I had jury duty, one of the first things we had to do was check in and receive our day's payment.

On the first day, the clerk verified my name and address, then asked about my occupation. "Are you at home?" he asked.

I hesitated. I honestly wasn't sure how to answer. I mean, yes, I'm at home with the kids a lot of the time, but I also spend about twenty hours a week away from home at my other job. Which occupation did the court care about?

"Well, yes," I finally answered, "but I work part-time too."

Since a person can only be listed with one occupation, he said he'd leave it as it was. I took my fifteen dollars and went on with the rest of my day.

The next day, we went straight to the juror's room and didn't get our money until lunchtime, at which point we had to sign next to our names on a list. Occupations were also listed, and next to my name it said "homemaker."

It bothered me and I've spent weeks thinking about exactly why it bothered me and have yet to come up with a reason.

First of all, the fact that I balked at the word immediately made me feel like a traitor to all my SAHM sisters out there. I don't want to say, "But that's not ALL I do," because I feel like that diminishes the effort that it takes to be a stay home parent. And for three years, that was "all I did." I never gave up working at my job completely, but my hours were extremely minimal. Some weeks I only worked 4 hours, and it was always after business hours when the kids were home in bed. If anyone asked what I did, my immediate response was, "I'm a stay-home mom." And proud of it.

Even if being at home with the kids was "all I did," there is nothing wrong with that. Any stay home parent will tell you how challenging it is.

I thought maybe it had something to do with the word. I would prefer SAHM over homemaker, but that's stupid because they are essentially the same thing. It's like calling a trash man a sanitation engineer. It's a fancier title, but it doesn't change the job description. SAHM or homemaker or even housewife, they are all the same job. So that theory went in the trashcan too.

I asked for reactions to the word on Twitter and on an online forum I belong to, and almost all the responses were positive.

Some examples:

"A woman who enjoys all the trappings of keeping the house and home. Someone who sews, bakes, and makes the family comfortable in the house to make it a Home."

"Someone who takes care of her family and home and loves doing it.""Putting those band-aids on our boo-boos & having that magical kiss to make it better like my Mom."

"A person who stays at home, making it a healthy, serene, happy, nurturing environment and realizes that he/she is part of a team that is creating and sustaining a family."

"Someone who takes care of her family. Who watches over them and is there
when they need her. Loving, caring, nurturing and kind."

Only one person thought that the term implied either unemployment or someone who is uneducated. Obviously, neither of those things is accurate. Being a stay home parent might not come with a paycheck, but it's certainly work. All the stay home parents I personally know are educated. In fact, there is a current trend of women who are highly educated (doctors, lawyers, etc) putting their careers on hold to stay home with their children in the early years.

So if all the people I asked about it had positive views of the word homemaker, why was I struggling with it? Why would I, a SAHM, and daughter of a stay home parent, feel so oddly?

I'm beginning to think it has something to do with wondering if the lawyers in the case I served on might have felt differently about me had they known what else I do. There was some testimony involving medical facts and procedures that I'm familiar with, and I understood a lot of the jargon that other juror's had to have defined. Would I have served on that jury if I had been listed as "veterinary technician" instead of "homemaker?" Or even "blogger?"

Our tax returns list me as a veterinary technician because that's where my taxable income comes from, but I never thought about precisely how I define myself in this much detail until my experience with jury duty. And I'm pretty sure there is no entry on a form that is large enough to encompass everything that is me.

Thoughts? What do you think of the term "homemaker?"

Calling All Coupon Enthusiasts!

Back when John and I were first married, one of the first things I did was subscribe to the newspaper. Not only did I enjoy reading the comics page and the letters to the editor, the coupons that came with it saved me a lot of money on groceries. The paper cost a dollar a week, and the coupons more than paid for the subscription.

Several years ago, I stopped taking the paper. Times have been tough for print media, the paper is feeling really thin, and the coupons have ceased to save me a lot of money.

This is partly due to the fact that I have really changed the way we eat since Johnny was born. We've switched to more fresh foods, incorporated more whole grains and avoid a lot of heavily processed or sugary packaged goods, and there just aren't coupons out there to help defray the cost of produce and lean meat. However, I've also noticed a decrease in the value of coupons offered and the variety of coupons offered. Where I once used to clip a coupon for a dollar off a box of Cheerios, now I would need to buy three boxes to save that dollar, and the availability of those cereal coupons is less.

Someone I know online recently said she saved over one hundred dollars on a grocery trip using coupons. I'm impressed and also a little baffled. How is that possible?

The best I have ever done was when Safeway held it's grand reopening sale. They had a ton of Buy One Get One Free sales, as well as expanded Ten For Ten items, plus I had coupons for ten dollars off my total AND 10% off. Between all that and the few manufacturer's coupons I had, and the sale prices, I saved 40%. That was my shining moment. Unfortunately, I've never been able to repeat it.

We do use coupons for health and beauty items, and we buy them at Walmart or Target, and that does save a lot of money. My mother-in-law gets multiple sets of coupons, so she gives me the ones she can't use, and that is where most of my coupons come from. But when it comes to food coupons, I'm finding them seriously lacking. Either that, or I'm doing something seriously wrong!

For example, the last time I went to the store, I hadn't finished this menu plan yet, so my list was mostly stapes we were out of--milk, eggs, waffles, fruit, etc. I came home with this:

6-pack bottles Diet Pepsi (sale)
3 boxes Kashi cereal bars
2 packages Juicy Juice juice boxes
1 bottle Juicy Juice strawberry kiwi juice
Utz potato chips (sale--a request from my H)
2 bottles storebrand seltzer water
package 8-oz Deer Park (I normally don't buy bottled water, but these are for a trip later this week)
4 cans cat food
18-count eggs (sale)
large package string cheese (sale)
2 gallons 1% milk (sale)
2 32-ounce Lucerne cottage cheese (sale)
Smart Balance spread
2 boxes storebrand waffles (sale)
bananas
cucumber
red leaf lettuce
asparagus (sale)
tomatoes
strawberries (sale)

I had zero manufacturers coupons and zero store coupons, but I did have a 10 dollar off entire purchase coupon that Safeway sent me in the mail, so that brought my total down to 79 dollars. The sales saved me about 23 dollars.

I will still need to fill in the gaps for my menu plan, but we're pretty well stocked with basics like rice, flour, pasta and frozen veggies, and we have chicken in the freezer as well.

Even so, I'll need to buy potatoes, broccoli, bread, cheese, shrimp, cauliflower and a few other things, and by the time I go, I can guarantee we'll be out of milk and fruit again as well. I'll probably spend at least thirty dollars, if not more like fifty, bringing my weekly total to 139. I think that's reasonable for a family of four, but some weeks are more expensive, depending on sales and how many people I'm feeding.

I have cut down our grocery bills over the past few years, but it's mostly by trying store brands and avoiding costly convenience products, not with coupons.

All you couponers out there--share with me. How does one save one hundred dollars on groceries with coupons? What sort of food are you buying that you can use that many coupons? And looking at my list, do you have any coupon strategies?

My Favorite Photographs

Every few months, the card on my digital camera gets full and I burn the images to disk, then empty the card. This past time, I also had a large number of pictures of Johnny's preschool artwork as well. I have a thing about clutter and papers piling up (specifically, my "thing" is anti-clutter and anti-paper), so I only save the really special projects. The rest get photographed, the hard copy goes into the recycle pile and I burn the images to a disk labeled "Johnny's artwork."

This month, I spent some time looking back at photos on those very early disks and marveling at how much my children have changed in a few short years. Those tiny babies with bald heads and chubby legs are long gone. They have been replaced with a bean pole almost five-year-old and a curly headed, blue-eyed angel. It made me smile to look at those pictures, so I thought I'd share some of my favorites from my trip down memory lane.

Johnny's first Christmas.



Maureen at 3 days old.



Johnny, shortly before Maureen was born. I was very pregnant, due to deliver any day, and needed a picture of him to send with my holiday cards. Thank goodness this photo shoot was a success, because Maureen was born a few days later.



Camping last fall with Daddy.



After a session with sidewalk chalk. If you click on the picture, you can see they are both covered in it.



Maureen at the beach last summer.



All the toys they have, and she plays with the box.



I snapped this cute shot shortly after Johnny learned to climb stairs.



Just learning to crawl after the cat. Jameson looks like a mountain lion, but in reality, he's an average sized cat.



At the Harford County Farm Fair last summer, taking shelter from a rain storm in the wheel of a tractor.



Maureen at the pool last summer.



I love how they are looking at each other like they are up to something.



This was taken last summer and really showed me how much Maureen no longer looked like a baby.



Johnny was around 9 months when this was taken, and it was because we had the nerve to put him in the grass. You know you are raising a city kid at that point!



Being silly. He looks like such a baby here!



Sleeping peacefully.



This was Johnny after he learned how to pull to standing. Look how proud he looks!



This picture was taken while we waited for a table at a restaurant. It was a freezing cold winter day. She looks almost like a porcelain doll!



This is Johnny, shortly after he learned to sit up unsupported. I was inspired by a scene from "E.T." and he loved it.



On this day, he played hard, then crashed hard.



One of the last times he sat in the highchair, this was taken at my dad's surprise 65th birthday party.



I was always happy to dress Maureen in pink.



This picture cracks me up, because Maureen and Johnny started out roughly the same size. Maureen was an ounce heavier and an inch shorter. It was amazing to me how much he had grown!



Johnny asleep in his carseat at his christening.



Johnny at 3 days old.



Sitting up.



The digital camera was still pretty new when I took this picture, and the delay in flash meant that I kept missing his smile. I still like it because of his big blue eyes and his fuzzy hair.