Vanessa Alter : random thoughts

We spent the evening at home with the kiddos to ring in the new year.  Mia fell asleep around 10, so she partied in her crib at midnight.  Sean stayed up and made his own Lego Batman setup with real legos, but he informed us that since he didn’t have a Batman lego dude, he had to use the Indiana Jones dude.  He also kept asking about every 30 minutes when it was time for the sparkling grape juice.  He didn’t care about the changing of the year… he just wanted the fancy juice in the fancy cups and wanted to clank the glasses together and yell, “Cheers!”.  Sean is currently passed out on the couch.  He lost his battle against the sandman about a minute after he told me, “I’m not sleepy at all!  I could stay up for days!”.

Nathan and I awaited the countdown by playing scrabble.  It got pretty close, and he pulled ahead for a bit.  I had the chance to play the word “machined” on a triple word square and use all my letters for the additional bonus, but I didn’t think it was really a word.  I’ve heard the phrase “machined the rotors” when talking about cars, but I thought that was just a slangy way of saying it.  Well, it’s a real word.  I was so sad that I passed up that opportunity.  Nathan was glad I did…until my next turn, that is.  I was able to play “Romanced” on the triple word square and used all my letters on that to get the bonus, so I went and laid  the smack down on poor hubby.  But at least it was a sweet word like “romanced”.  Love you, honey!

After the New Year arrived, I played “Professor Layton and the Curious Village” on my DS and FINALLY finished it.  Now I can get the 2nd game!  Yay!  Now it’s 3 am and I’m going to bed, which means the baby will be up very early.  Oh well, Thus it goes.

Oh, and…..

Happy New Year!!!

On the drive home from Target today, Sean and I spied car that was all muddy on the back.  He pointed to the car and said,

“Look at that car, Mommy!  It’s all muddy!  They need to go to the car wash or something.  I DO NOT want to lick the back of THAT car!”

Me:  “Why would you lick the back of ANY car?”

Sean: (Thought for a second) “I don’t know.  I just might, but not THAT one!”

Yep, sometimes he makes me so proud. 

Sean started playing basketball for Upward.org. It’s a neat program where all the kids get equal playing time and a chance to start. In his age group, they don’t even keep score because the kids are still learning the game. Each week, they also hand out cards to the kids that have a Bible verse for them to learn before the next practice. At every halftime and halfway through the practices, the kids and coaches get together and talk about the Bible verses they’ve been learning and how it applies to their lives. This has really been a great motivator for Sean to commit some verses to memory. So far, I’ve been very pleased with this program (Thanks for telling me about it, P!).

Sean is on a team with 5 and 6 year olds. Nathan and I aren’t big sports watchers, so this has made us realize that Sean has never actually seen a real basketball game. Before Sean started playing, he thought playing basketball was just shooting baskets. So when they have games, he kind of wanders around aimlessly and passes the ball to people on the other team. He even claps and gets excited when the opposing team scores a basket. Watching his age group play a game is pretty cute. Sean is also very non-confrontational, so he doesn’t like to get closer than 6 feet away from the person who he is supposed to be guarding. It is too funny. There’s usually about 4 kids out of 10 out on the court that know what they’re doing. At today’s game, his coach announced him in the starting lineup as “Sean ‘Air’ Alter”. Anyways, we got some free tickets to go see the Lady Lobos tomorrow against NMSU, so hopefully that will give Sean an idea of what basketball is supposed to look like.

She finally said “Mama” today!!! So exciting! She’s been saying Dada for a little while now. She seems to learn a new sound every week. Yesterday it was “nuh, nuh, nuh , nuh”. Mia is now 10 and a half months, crawling all over and walking while holding on to things. She’s growing super fast. Her hair is finally long enough to do real piggy tails, not just half pig tails. She started sleeping through the night with regularity last week. I cannot tell you how happy that make me! Yay!

I just tried to call Southwest Airlines for some information, but all the customer service reps were busy. They now give you an option to enter your phone number and receive a call back when it’s your turn in the queue. They say you don’t lose “your place” in the order of calls, and you don’t have to wait on the phone. They tell you approximately how many minutes it will take until you receive a call back. My range was between 13 and 21 minutes. Now… we’ll see if they call back.

UPDATE: They called back 15 minutes later. Nice.

Sean read his first book all by himself today. It was about a tan fat cat that ran fast. He was so excited that he had to call Daddy at work to tell him. It’s pretty fun to get to share in his accomplishments… it’s like seeing him take those first steps all over again.

I found a website that has a template to create your own home school ID cards for both students and teachers. I thought this might be helpful since there are often businesses that give discounts to students and/or educators but they often require an ID card. You can upload a picture to put on the card as well. The free version lets you print the card on your home printer (maybe a heavy card stock would be good), or you can pay $6.95 to have them print it a laminate it for you. That’s not that great a deal since you can print at home and have it laminated locally for cheaper than that.

I went to Target tonight while Hubby watched the kids. I had a STACK of coupons on hand, some that I needed to use before they expired and for things that I know we needed. Well, after all was said and done, I paid $30.10 out of pocket, got a $5.00 gift card back for my next purchase, and had a total savings of $39.26 from coupons and sale prices. Ka-ching! For those of you who don’t know, you can really save a ton of money with coupons. MOST stores allow you to use a manufacturer’s coupon, along with a store coupon to double your savings. That’s how my bill got so low. Target is one of those stores. Anytime you have a manufacturer’s coupon that you plan on using at Target, also check this site to see if there are any Target coupons that match up with the item. By doing this, you can practically get items for free! Actually, I did get some free string cheese tonight. We didn’t really need any, but it was free, and that’s always within my price range. Coupon-ing rocks!

It’s been a long while since I did an actual post, so here ya go…

We took a family vacation to California in July and we hit Disneyland on mine and Nathan’s birthday (yes, same day). We had fun in Cali, but the drive to and from was not what I would call fun. Mia was not a very good traveler at the time. She has since learned to sit in her car seat and not complain too much, thankfully!

Sean and I started home school Kindergarten last Monday, on August 24th. So far, it’s going well… we’re keeping up with our schedule, and even doing extra lessons when we both feel like it. So far, it seems to be a breeze for him, but we haven’t really started anything complicated. We’re doing math, phonics, american history and creation science. I have a handwriting curriculum that I picked up as well, but the math and phonics has so much writing already, so I think I’ll hold off on that, so as to not cripple his little hand before he turns 6. I plan to do some social studies type lessons using library books, too. We also get to have fun with some artsy type stuff as well. I love that we can get outside and play (built-in P.E.!) after we finish our book work. Today we went to the park and played some soccer and did some running. We’re thinking about registering him for basketball this winter too. When I asked him if he’d like to play on a team, he said, “yeah, but I can’t dribble very well.” I think he forgets sometimes that he’s only 5.

Mia is now almost 7 months old. She still refuses to crawl, or spend much time on her belly at all. She just wants to stand up and has started to try to pull herself up to stand sometimes. Nothing really seems to motivate her enough to really try to crawl or scoot over to get it. Lazy baby! She’s around 16 and a half pounds and 24.15 feet (don’t make me convert that to inches). She’s still a chunk, but definitely not as chunky as she used to be. She’s eating some solid food now. Her favorites are squash and corn, peas, and mashed avocados. She doesn’t have much of sweet tooth, at least not for pureed fruits. But she does enjoy bits of brownies when I can spare them off my plate.

It’s funny. I thought that once we started home schooling, I’d be a frazzled mess, but I actually feel even more organized and relaxed during the day. I also thought that waking up earlier to get school done would drive me crazy, but it’s been going well, and I feel more rested than before we started… and Mia is STILL waking up every 2-3 hours at night! Go figure!

me: What do you want to have as a job when you grow up?

Sean: a Knight!

I love that kid!