A book for every child

It's ironic but Bub is not a reader. You'd think a librarian's child would have more interested but his reading ability is not strong. He's getting there but it seems to be taking a lot to keep him on level. The school is doing its best to resolve the situation by putting him in reading remediation. He is also in speech therapy because his speech is lacking too and I'm sure there is a connection between the two and also the ADHD. But we do a lot of reading at home too. We've always read to him at bedtime and now he reads to us. Also I've always listened to audio books in the car but most of the time he is not with me, well, up until late in the school year last year. I started taking him to school as a way to offset his time on the bus and relieve the nighttime stress of homework which was driving me a breaking point almost every night. So he has been coming to work with me in the mornings, eating his breakfast and doing his homework in my office and then I've been taking him to school. It's working out quite nicely. One of the rules though is that I still get to listen to a book in the car. Most of the time he barely seems to pay attention but my line of thinking goes along that even if he is not outright listening, he is still hearing it and that can't be bad. I just finished the Enola Holmes series on Thursday and I don't think he liked the one because it is a bit on the violent side for a 7 year old. I put in Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier and at the end of the car ride to work, he said "I like this one," something I can't recall him every saying. Normally I continue on with a book even when he is not with me. But this time I decided we can listen to the whole thing together. So the next morning, we got in the car but had to drop Button off at daycare so I didn't put on the book. He was playing on his Nintendo DS and when I got back from bringing in her. I put the book on. He put down the DS and started listening and THAT really has never happened before. Over the weekend we didn't get a chance to really listen to it. But Monday morning as we were driving off the radio was on. He said, "We can listen to music later tonight. We should listen to the book" and my heart sang. I had finally found his book.

There's a great quote by Holly Black (I think) about there is the right book for every child and I've been searching for something that will click with him. He loves nonfiction but even that didn't seem to interest him. It's like reading is a chore and that is not an attitude that I am familiar with. I've always loved reading. I don't know what it is about Peter Nimble that has captured him but I'm hoping to pick books out now that he will want to listen to. He seemed a little interested in the Percy Jackson books when I had those so maybe I will go back with those. Maybe he would be interested in the  Peter and the Starcatchers series. I hope so. I'm going to try at least.

Pat on the back

I feel like giving myself a high five these days. I have successfully been meal planning and weekly grocery shopping since April. That's a long time for me since I tend to lack follow-through on my grand plans (see also: exercising, limiting electronic use, cleaning out the cabinets, homemade baby food, etc.).  Plus I've been using my reusable grocery bags at every trip and even have BT doing the same when he goes. It cuts down on the amount of plastic bags we have AND is very environmentally conscious.  We tend to eat the same things a lot but I've developed enough of a menu so that it's not the same thing every week. Plus when BT is off on weekdays he can do the cooking and that saves me some time and energy.

The other thing I managed to do was clean out Bub's room. His birthday and Christmas are coming up and so he is going to get more toys so I wanted to start parring down what he has now. He was away overnight this past weekend so I gathered all of the toys that were spread out all over the floor and under the bed and put them into garbage bags so that, soon, the two of us can go through them and decide what to keep and what to get rid of and find places for the stuff he wants. He has a lot of toys and quite of few of them are in pieces or half together or kind of babyish for his age. I'm really terrible at getting rid of things. I weeded his bookcase and pulled out quite a few "baby" books and put them in Button's room. I rearranged his room and put the little couch from Button's room into his room so now he has a sitting area and she has more room for a new bed that we will get in the next few months (hopefully). I'm going to go through her room and get it back into shape next weekend.

The other plan I have to is take one cabinet a weekend and go through it and organize it. It seems like every cabinet in the place is chockablock full of just stuff and I need to neaten it up. This is a more ambitious plan since it requires quite a bit of follow-through so we'll see. I'm going to try.

This and that

I didn't realize it had been so long since I've been on this blog until I looked my book blog and realized I hadn't been over there in a while too. Things at work have been super busy between interviews, presentation preparations, and meeting, meetings, meetings, among other things. At least this week is looking like I might get a breather. Plus, at home, school and soccer have started and BT has moved into a weekend rotation at work. But that feels like more of the same.

I was thinking about what I wanted to write about. That Bub got marked as failure to thrive too at his last check-up so he had blood work done too and he is fine though was thoroughly traumatized by the needle, something that was sad and then later super funny.  He is so dramatic. I'm still struggling to help my kids gain weight but they are both doing well. That some kid in Bub's class broke his glasses and so he went about a month with no glasses but he is getting his new super cool pair today. Also I've develop an intense dislike of an 8 year in Bub's class.

I could write about how Button is the twoest two year old that ever was a 2 year old and I have abandoned the idea of putting her dance class and instead think she is definitely going to gymnastics. Her willingness to FLING herself at surfaces and hope she sticks the landing is both interesting and heart stopping to watch. And her new favorite song to sing "Twinkle twinkle little star" but she fuses the ABC song with it so she sounds like a drunken sailor especially when she lays on the floor and sings "Twinktle Twinktle little ABCD STAAAARRR" and counts "1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10." And that potty training is still hit or miss with the misses being the higher percentage but that it's a slow and steady thing. I'm thinking of taking an upcoming weekend break from soccer and doing a boot camp to see if I can't get her where I want her to be. She's interested in the the wiping and flushing and the prizes but the actual action is where she is stalling.

But that's generally the whole story of those stories. So I'll just leave it at those anecdotes and try to find a full topic soon. Meanwhile it's the first day of autumn and the weather is not that hot and, dare I say, even a little pleasant and I had a giant chocolate donut courtesy of the Cataloging Department and the first song that came up on my playlist was "Shake It Off" so I'm going to take that as a sign that this week might be one of the better ones I've had in a while.

A post about coffee

I can't pretend to be some kind of coffee connoisseur. That would be my husband, but I like coffee. For a long time I added a little milk and some Ovaltine to my coffee every morning since I'm not up to drinking it black. Then I started getting flavored coffee pods when we got our Keuring and it escalated from there. I found a caramel macchiato flavor at Target and that was extra good with some condensed milk added it.

Lately, though,  I've been buying flavored coffee creamer to add to my Community Coffee Breakfast Blend. Community Coffee is a Louisiana based coffee company and it's the brand
my parents have always use and, consequently, so do I (also BT worked for them for 3 years). I've tried Salted Caramel Mocha, Caramel Macchiato and Southern Butter Pecan and have enjoyed them all. The last couple of weeks I've been buying the International Delight iced coffees and, inspired by the Internet, adding frozen coffee cubes to it. My mom gave me a whole bunch of french vanilla coffee pods that I didn't really like. But I started freezing them and it turns out that the internet is right. They make good ice for cold coffee drinks. I just add 2 of those and then pour the iced coffee over it and go and it doesn't get watered down. It's a good summer morning drink. 

It's starting to feel more like fall lately especially since Bub started 2nd grade last week so I'm looking forward to some Pumpkin Spice lattes and going back to hot coffee drinks. I've found the older I get the more I look forward to a cup of coffee in the morning.

Pregnancy nostalgia

It seems to be baby time or at least it is on my Facebook feed. Several people have announced pregnancies for late this year or early 2015. I got a little sentimental thinking about being newly pregnant with my kids. I never did an elaborate announcement like Pinterest shows. I was pregnant with Bub before Facebook was the thing that it is now. So that was mostly a word of mouth type thing.

I remember sitting at my desk and feeling woozy. We weren't really trying for a baby yet (the time was set for a few months from then) but it was still a possibility and as soon as I felt that I began to suspect. I stopped and bought 1 pregnancy test and as soon as I got home I took it. When I saw those 2 lines, I freaked out. I ran back to the store and bought more tests and took 2 more. All came back positive almost immediately. I called my BFF-cousin because I knew that out of everyone she would be level-headed about it and I certainly didn't want to tell BT over the phone. She reassured me and I called the doctor. The nurse had me come in and do a pregnancy test, basically what I had just done 3 of at home and she confirmed it. We were leaving that afternoon to go to BT's grandfather's funeral so I had to pick BT up at work. On the way to do that I was trying to figure out how to tell him but, in the end, he got in the car, I burst into tears and told him I was pregnant. He was very happy about it. It was almost time anyway. We told BT's parents that night by bascially saying "You know how you just became grandparents? You ready to do it again?"(the Nephew had just been born) and then my parents when we got home. Nothing very clever. Well except my whole life anytime I wanted to talk to my mom, she'd start the conversation with "You're not pregnant, are you?" So I sat down and said "Hey, remember how anytime I wanted to talk to you, you'd say 'You're not pregnant, are you?' Well I want to talk to you." She got it and my parents were super happy.

For Button, I had this feeling that I wanted to keep it to myself for just a little bit. Bub belong to everyone almost right away and I wanted this one for myself. She was definitely planned so it was not surprising. Since we were trying, I bought some pregnancy tests and had them at the house. One Friday before I was suppose to start my period, I took one and it came back with the faintest line but I knew. So the next day I went out and bought a pack of newborn diapers and made a card that said "You ready to do this again?" and tied a positive pregnancy test to the diapers with the note and put it on the table. I thought BT would see it right away but, I swear, the man has some sort of tunnel vision. I sent him to the kitchen at least 3 times thinking he would see it. But no, finally, I had to tell him to go look on the table. It was a little anticlimactic. We told my parents a few weeks later by putting a Big Brother t-shirt on Bub. My mom was home alone and I had to direct her to look at his shirt and then my sister and dad when they got home. We put the same shirt on Bub a few weeks after that when we went to the beach for Labor Day with BT's family. They saw it right away so that was gratifying.

I look at my kids and it's funny to think about before I had them, when I just found out I was pregnant and now here they are such amazing little people.