Trying for the Positive

Today has been one of those days where I've dealt with both frustration and feelings of pride.  Though I'm glad to say, the feelings of pride are winning.

I had an unexpected day to myself, since my friend Becca has two sick kids.  I've been helping her (or trying to) get packed for their move to their new house next week.  Her eldest was sick last night, so she asked me to watch the baby.  Since he's one of the happiest babies I've ever had the privilege of keeping an eye on, I had no problem with it.  But this morning, she sent me a text to let me know that her middle child was sick as well.  Since she wasn't going to be able to get much done with packing, she said she'd keep the baby.  I know that I should have planned on housework, but honestly, I planned on napping.  Sleep, for whatever reason, hasn't been as restful as it should have been.

Instead, I ended up having to drive to Teddy's school because I forgot to put his eye patch on this morning.  (He's back to wearing one all day for a month because his eye has weakened again.)  It gave me a chance to chat with his teacher for a bit to find out how things have been with him at school.  I also got to see pictures of her new baby and she's sooooo adorable!

Since I was already out, I decided to head to Target to pick up more of the magazine holders they had in their dollar bins.  (They make a great temporary storage for my comics.)  I absolutely love those dollar bins at Target.  I regularly find inexpensive craft supplies, little goodies for the boys, organizational items and other things.  Today, along with the paper magazine holders, I picked up a couple metal ones they had for $2.50 each and plastic storage baskets that I'll be using for some organization.  They'll be going on the stairs, one for each of us, and will hold things that need to go upstairs for each of us.

I also picked up a few shirts for the boys - three for Teddy and one for Pete.  I actually prefer Target's clearance clothing to Wal-Marts, because they usually have cooler stuff for less.  I didn't find as much for Pete, just one long-sleeved one that was kind of cute.  Teddy, on the other hand, got two Pokemon shirts and an Adventure Time shirt.  This one is my favorite:

He looks great in it too (as soon as we got home, he decided that he wanted to wear it).

I planned on napping a bit when I got home, but I got caught up in the book that I'd been listening to (A Bite to Remember by Lynsay Sands) and the one I'd been reading (The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt by Caroline Preston), as well as wandering around Pintrest (yes, I'm becoming addicted).  Just as I was about ready to leave to pick up Pete from PDO, my phone rang and it was Teddy's school. He pooped his pants again.

So I called Pete's PDO to beg them to have Pete awake and ready for me (and luckily, they were understanding and did so), and then rushed to pick up Teddy.  I did get some good news regarding Pete - not only did he have a great day in general, behaving like he was supposed to, but he also went both poopie and pee-pee on the potty.  It's a step in the right direction.

When I got to Teddy's school, I found out that it wasn't really his fault, pooping his pants this time.  He had diarrhea again.  But, I was proud of him with one thing - he actually told his teacher rather than trying to hide it.  It's a problem that he's had lately, trying to hide when he poops his pants because he's afraid he'll get in trouble.  So rather than focus on the pooping, I made sure to focus on what he did right.  I did tell him that we need to work on getting him to the bathroom on time - I'm still not sure why he has been having trouble with it (since it's usually NOT diarrhea).  Hopefully, we'll be able to get him through this.

So I'm feeling relatively positive about today.  I'm hoping that tomorrow will be a good day as well. I'll have both boys at home (with the whole sick-at-school thing for Teddy) but it will give Teddy and I a chance to work on some of his homework and I'll get a chance to get a few other things done as well.

Positive days. I like them.

Coming back to the List Challenge

The List Challenge is one that I'd started participating in back in March.  Then life happened and it didn't.  But I still like making lists and I've wanted to get back to it and I figured now was as good a time as any.  If you'd like to check out the list of challenges, along with my lists for each question, you can find it here.  I'm going to continue to go back and link up the answers as I write them.

Today's list is:

Good Things That Happened This Week

• We got the letter from Teddy's school letting us know some of the important information that we need for him to start next week. I won't find out who his teacher is until the day before school, but at least I know where to park and where to go and all that stuff.
• I've ordered my yearly Sandra Boyton calendar... and this year, I may actually have things to write in it!
• Between my mother-in-law and I, we've finally found some shorts that Teddy will be able to wear to school (thanks to the dress code).
• I found small alphabet stamps at Target in their dollar bins.
• I finally got all the laundry that had been sitting around forever finished.
• Peter still wanted me to carry him - bad on my back, but good for my soul.
• I found that, within the last 9 months, I've read 121 books.
• I was featured on The Mom Pledge Blog today!

Bites of my life

I finally got a couple chairs and a small table for on my front porch.  I'd been wanting one for awhile, and now with the weather nicer and the hopes of getting the boys outside more regularly, it seemed like the perfect time for it.  I can sit and read a book, work on the computer, do some writing... lots of different options while enjoying the sun and light breeze.  I can't wait to try it out.

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While we were in Target picking out the (very inexpensive) chairs and table for our front porch, we walked through the media area.  Oh, how I wished I had a lot of money!  They are having a lot of sales on various TV shows and movies that seem like fantastic deals to me.  We did end up picking up one DVD - Murder on the Orient Express with David Suchet as Poirot.  I hadn't realized that he had actually made Murder on the Orient Express, so it was a real thrill.  As much as I've enjoyed the Ustinov versions I've seen, Suchet is the definitive Poirot to me.  We've been watching it tonight and... I'm not 100% sure how I feel about this particular version.  It's got several departures from Agatha Christie's original story and I just can't reconcile them in my mind.  I think I need a few more viewings to figure it out.

The extras on the DVD have been excellent, though.  David Suchet is doing a special on traveling on the Orient Express.  He's actually taking the Orient Express himself and I'm really enjoying this part of it a lot.

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The other day, Teddy had me chuckling.  He asked me if I was a veterinarian.  When I asked him if he knew what a veterinarian was, he told me that it could be two different things.  Either it was someone who worked with animals or it was someone that didn't eat meat.  I then got to explain the difference between a veterinarian and a vegetarian.  Sometimes I forget that he's still young enough to make these mistakes.  I find them endearing.

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Pete is talking more and more clearly every day.  Today, when we were at the eye doctor's picking out Teddy's new glasses (and I'll be getting pictures of him with his old glasses and then him with his new glasses to put up), we were waiting for the girl at the desk to enter our info into the computer system.  While we were waiting, Teddy started talking to another boy that was there.  And Peter piped up with, "My name ith Pe-ah." Just like I forget that Teddy is as young as he is,I often forget how old Peter is.  I hear him talk every day and it still surprises me.

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I'm thinking about trying to pre-write more of my entries.  I'd never really thought about doing so before, but I think it'll be the best way to take advantage of some of the thoughts in my head that fit with certain weekly times (or, with the A to Z challenge, with certain letters).  How many of my readers set up posts to post later?Does it work for you?  If so, how many of your posts do you write for later posting?  And why do you chose to set up posts in this way?  For those of you who don't, have you ever considered doing so?  Why have you made the choices that you've made when it comes to your posts?  I'm just curious.

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And now that it's 11:30, I should head to bed.  Kids have PDO tomorrow and I've got to get them in the tub in the morning, plus make their breakfasts and lunches for the day and make sure I'm ready for some walking. And I'm probably going to do a little reading before bed.  See if I can finish at least one of the books that I'm almost finished with yet. Gotta get some reading in or my day isn't complete.

Good night, dear friends!

Later, Later, Later

Yeah, so much for me getting a bunch of posts done this morning.  Instead, I spent time sprucing up my blog a bit more and adding more blogs to both my Google Reader and my blog roll.  I haven't even had a chance to read the (almost 450) new blog posts I have in FeedSquares.

I'm hoping to be able to get a few more things finished while Rich and the boys are at church, but no promises there.  I've got to make a run to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things and me in Wal-Mart usually equals a lot of extra time spent.  However, Rich is tutoring this evening, so maybe I'll be lucky enough to get some things done then.  Or even after the boys go to bed, when I can work on the netbook while Rich is grading.

This is DEFINITELY a busy weekend!  But I can't complain.  Busy keeps the negatives away.

By the way, please let me know what you think of my new blog bits.  I left the background because a lot of people have commented on liking it.  I think the new badge and new banner go with it, but I'd like other opinions.

Time to drop the family off at church and go SHOP!

What I've Been Up To, Thoughts, Questions and Anything Else That Comes to Mind

I feel like writing tonight more than doing much of anything else.  That's not to say that I won't do anything else, but for the moment, I'm going to just kind of go with the flow.

Teddy's been sick for the last week, so we took him to the doctor today.  His fever's been off and on, which I didn't worry a whole lot about until a) it happened for a week and b) one of the teachers/mother of one of his classmates said that her son had the same symptoms and his doctor diagnosed it as flu.  Our doctor was only able to say that it wasn't strep and probably was a flu-like virus.  And that it looks like it's mostly run it's course. He's been fever free all day, so I'm planning to send him to PDO tomorrow.  Which Mommy really needs.

Since I was over in that area, I stopped by Michaels while I was there.  I'm trying, and failing desperately, to find a stamp or a stencil or something reusable and/or easy to find again (like stickers) with generic books/someone reading/a quote about reading.  With all of the book swaps I've been doing lately, I think having something book related that I can use to jazz up envelopes or bookmarks or pages in journals would be a great thing.  I just don't have any luck with it.  If anyone has any directions that they can send me in my hopeless-feeling quest, I'll be forever grateful!  I've tried Amazon and while they have some, but of the few selections they had, nothing jumped out at me.

I have found, however, that Michaels will be where I go for my journaling needs.  I picked up a couple of really pretty 100 pages journals for $2 each.  If I'm not in the mood to decorate a journal, I think these will be the ones I'll use.  I may go back over one day next week and pick up a few of the 80 pagers that they had for $1 for some of the smaller swaps that I'm doing.  I also picked up a new punch and a new stamp that looked kind of neat and useful in the $1 bin.  When I can go sans kids (because going today with them was a nightmare on two sets of feet), I'm going to look through their punches a little more closely.  The one I picked up today has a butterfly, but I glimpsed a few others that may have caught my fancy if I had more than 2 seconds to look at them.  And I may check Big Lots again for some of the punches, because I know they've had some in the past for around $1 as well.

Another item that I'm having a heck of a time finding is stationary sets.  I used to remember seeing them all the time when I was younger - I even had several of them.  Now I'm finding a ton of notecard sets but no stationary and matching envelopes.  And I'm not quite crafty enough yet to try making my own envelopes. Any of my readers that have suggestions on that, I'll be happy to hear from you as well.

I can also use some advice.  My boys have been getting completely out of control when we've gone out to stores lately.  Though, honestly, it's more Pete than Teddy.  Teddy does have his meltdown moments, but more often than not, he's willing to help me.  Pete, however, thinks that "Run away from Mommy and get into everything I can" is the most exciting game in the world and he has to play.  I've tried putting him in the cart - he tries to climb back out.  I've tried buckling him in, but have the carts have broken buckles any more.  I've tried swatting his bottom.  No luck.  I can REALLY use any suggestions from anyone who has dealt with the same kind of thing.  Because at this point, I'm getting to where I don't ever want to leave the house with them again except for PDO, doctor's appointments or to go to the park.

My toils with organization are still ongoing.  I picked up the Organizher Family Organizer on clearance and I'm finding it incredibly useful.  It has undated calendars with different sections for each member of the family, plus a section for lunch and dinner and daily notes, as well as a notes column on the side for the week.  There are several meal planner sheets with grocery list space on the back, two large plastic zip-closed pockets, sheets for addresses and websites, a plastic business card holder and elastics over the back cover to keep things that you may need there.  It's in a three ring binder, plus Mead (who makes the product) has downloadable content on their website so I can add pages when I need it.  So far, it's been pretty useful this week.

I have a grand plan for organizing swaps.  Actually, two grand plans.  The first is the 3 shelf bookcase that I bought.  At the moment, my crafting supplies are all over the dining room.  There's no place that can hold all of it.  So I'm going to use this bookcase for that purpose.  I have a caddy organizer (smallish) that I can put scissors and other things I don't want Pete to get his hands on on top. For things like pens/stamping pens/etc, I think I'm going to get a pencil case to keep him from grabbing that.  I'm hoping that I'll find new and inventive ways to use the space and still keep all my stuff relatively neat.  The second is getting a small folder or binder that I can put active swaps in.  I've found that when I've been out lately, I haven't been able to remember exact rules for certain swaps, or I don't have papers with me that I need, etc.  I can fill the folder with sheet protectors, get a ringed pencil case to put pens and dry erase markers in and have space to work on the things that I want to work on.  Not sure if it'll fit in my small backpack, but it's worth a try.

I've still desperately got to work on mu Plan.  I'm finding more and more that I can easily make excuses or waste too much time on the computer, things like that.  And in my effort to get better organized, I've got to stop doing it.  I'm hoping that a schedule will help me with it so I can get done the things that I NEED to get done.  I have such a hard time putting off fun until later.  Not much of an adult, sometimes.

I'm guessing that my bookcase isn't getting built tonight.  It was one of my possible plans, but I've been working on this quite a bit.  Not that this is a bad thing.  And maybe it's what I needed tonight more than building a bookcase.  It'll probably be easier with Rich around anyway.  I find it interesting the things that I write sometimes, what comes pouring forth from my brain, etc.

Maybe I should try working on a few of those book reviews at least.  The numbers keep going up rather than down.  Look for those shortly.  And thanks for listening to my babble.  Or reading my babble, which is slightly more appropriate.  And please... I'm serious about getting advice and suggestions.  I can't say that I'll take everyone's advice, but I will at least take a look at it.

Feel Good Friday, Part Deux - Feeling Good About My Week

This week hasn't been perfect.  Far from it, actually.  Teddy has been on his worst behavior more often than not, I had pulled a muscle in my leg that made me unable to do ANYTHING yesterday, and I had the kids home again today thanks to snow.  Still, I'm feeling really good about myself this week, which is an unusual occurrence of late.

Because for all the bad, there was still good.  A lot of good.  I finally took the step to get back into therapy.  I'd waited for over a month for the therapy location nearest me to call and set up an appointment for me.  I have a very serious phone phobia that keeps me from doing things that I should.  I kept promising myself that I would call if I didn't hear the next day.  And I couldn't force myself to do it.  Until this week.  Wednesday was the day that my motivation hit hard.  And while riding on the wave of that motivation, I picked up the phone and I called. I now have an appointment for therapy next Tuesday and a psych eval for Wednesday.  Apparently, I'd had an appointment on the 18th, but no one let me know.  The important thing is that I've got an appointment now that I DO know about.

I worked out on Wednesday and I cleaned on Wednesday.  I'm completely up to date on all my swaps.  I have some that I won't get my partners for until Sunday or so, but those can be done over the weekend.  I called my dad and talked to him about borrowing his stud finder so I can get things put up on the wall.  I'm taking Teddy to a study at Vanderbilt next week.  I went out with the kids to Wal-Mart today and had fun wandering around.  I took of the picture of the snow outside today so I can use it for the 2011 scrapbook that I'm creating.  I'm almost finished reading Moon Sworn.  I've been keeping track of my food and exercise on SparkPeople.  I started two groups on Swap-Bot.  I'm being productive. And I still have the rest of the weekend to be more productive and have more fun.

I hope to have more weeks like this.  More weeks of being productive and silly and having all kinds of fun.  Because, really, that's what the week should be about, shouldn't it?

Now I'm off to watch Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium.  I've been wanting to see it for awhile and now's my chance to share it with my kids.  I suspect this could be one that I'll want to own someday, just based on what I've seen so far.

Good-bye 2010, Hello 2011!

We've had a pretty good end of 2010/beginning of 2011.  Rich got out of work at noon and then we went shopping for snack-type foods.  That's our traditional NYE dinner - foods that aren't good for us but taste oh so good.  We let the boys help pick things out to eat, since they wanted to stay up with us.  We ended up with a lot of chips, pizza rolls, calzones and shrimp.  We also picked up some non-alcoholic red grape for the boys to drink and champagne for us.  The boys weren't too happy with the fact that they were going to need to nap if they wanted to stay up, but they did go down for their naps.

Not having cable and having an apartment that doesn't let any kind of signal come in means that we weren't sure what we were going to do for watching NYE festivities, but we found a streaming show from Times Square online, so we put that on the TV and enjoyed watching it through the night.  Surprisingly, both boys stayed up until 11.  Pete crashed out right after, but Teddy made it to midnight.  I've got pictures to put up, I just need to delete enough stuff from my computer so I have room for downloading them.  (REALLY need to get a new case for my external so we can use it...)  We put the boys to bed a little after midnight, then went to bed and talked for awhile ourselves. Rich was asleep by 12:30, but I laid awake and listened to the thunderstorm outside.  It was a good night.

The boys got us up way too early this morning, so we kind of vegged while they watched TV.  But I knew I needed to get out of the house, and I wanted to go to Big Lots.  It took us until noon to get ourselves together to go, so we stopped at Golden Corral for lunch.  Pete was adorable.  He fell pretty solidly asleep on the drive out there and stayed asleep as Rich brought him inside.  We pretty much propped him in the corner of the booth and let him sleep.  I got several pictures of that, too.  It wasn't until he started falling and threatened to hit his head on the table that I tried to move him and he woke up.  As always, we had yummy food to eat.  I even went a bit healthier, eschewing fried foods for veggies and a little steak.  I even kept my dessert to a small piece of red velvet cake and a square of banana nut bread.

We got a major find at Big Lots today, thanks to an As Is sale.  We'd been semi-interested in a multicolored 5 piece table and chair set that they'd had, but it was $40 and that was a bit more than we wanted to spend.  But today they had the floor model sold as is for $25.  There were only a few little imperfections in it, so we decided to get it.  We had to get a second cart to fit it in because we couldn't fit it into the cart with Pete sitting in it as well.

The set we picked up.

I let Rich and the boys go with their cart to look at the toys and food while I looked at the paper craft stuff.  I really wanted to get a lot more than I did, because I'm trying to get stuff together for my scrapping of 2011.  But I needed to keep an eye on money.  I did get a few sets and I also picked up some storage things, so I feel pretty good about it.  We also picked up a gift for my nephew's birthday this weekend.  All in all, it was a good shopping trip.  We made a quick stop by the grocery store to get orange juice so we can make some mimosas tomorrow morning.

The rest of the day has just been pretty relaxing.  There are things that we need to get done - some cleaning and organizing and the like.  But for all that today is a new beginning, it's a good day to reflect rather than jump in.  Tomorrow will be the time to get started on my resolutions and the like.

I hope all my readers had a wonderful New Year's Eve and that your 2011 is joyful, prosperous and filled with love.  Happy New Year!