26 January 2011

Too Late for Resolutions?

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So, co-op went reasonably well yesterday, although Isaac was barefoot through half of his second class. Nobody seemed to mind much, so I'll just roll with it. That's one of the dangers with cowboy boots - easy (for him) to slip off. He didn't seem to be much of a behavior problem though, so that's always good. We are beyond ready for his sleep to get sorted out again - I want my well-rested, well-behaved son back!

I've got a new responsibility at co-op: running the canteen/concession stand/yearbook-fundraiser snack counter. Seems pretty simple so far - the hardest part is lugging everything upstairs for lunch on a REALLY SQUEAKY cart. I think every teacher along the back hallway stuck their head out to see who was making such a racket!

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On the homefront, there are a few things I need to get nailed down. I'm not my wife and I can't juggle it all in my head. Printouts on the fridge, here we come!

Number one: we need to get a schedule. I wish Isaac and Esther could read it and follow it, but that's probably hoping too much. At the very least, I need to have it in front of me most of the day so I can, oh, start dinner sooner than 6:30 at night. And having a designated computer time about which I don't feel guilty would be great too.

Scheduling leads in to #2: meal planning. If I'm going to be the one at home all day and preparing meals, I need to have some sort of plan. I'll be happy with weekly for now; if I can actually get a whole month planned out, great! This should help out with grocery shopping and budgeting (four weeks of grocery budget spent in three this month - eep!), as well as getting meals in the kids. Tiffany's tried a couple times to tell me what the kids will eat, but I never remember it for more than a couple days, so Isaac ends up eating what he wants to tell me (usually, a tortilla and a glass of Maryland milk) and then has a meltdown later because he's hungry.

The last thing for now is getting an adult responsibility chart set up again. I tried early last fall to divvy up household chores between me and Tiffany, but it didn't take so well. I'm hoping that the combination of a new daily schedule (with designated 'chore' times) and a more realistic (read: more succinct) list of chores will prove to be a workable solution. I'll let you know how it goes.

Do you have any good tips for managing any of the three items above? How have you set up a meal plan for your household?

25 January 2011

Do-Over!

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Our homeschool co-op starts up again this morning. Isaac's classes this semester are Insects and Safety (two separate classes, not a single class on how to protect yourself from wasps). He's excited about both - I wonder how long it will be before he wants to take one of his 'weird animal' books to share.

I was going to be teaching a class on birds(!), but we didn't have anywhere for Esther to go while I taught (the nursery class is full - again - <grumble>). The solution was for someone else to take over my (mine, I tell you!) class and I'll be helping to run the canteen, while Esther tries to stay out of trouble. We'll see how that goes.

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Speaking of Esther, she's in the midst of potty training herself. Yay! The biggest challenge for me is to recognize when she needs to go. Usually she starts taking her clothes off - that's my cue. She seems to think that she has to be naked to go to the bathroom. I'm sure she'll grow out of that eventually, right? In the meantime, we'll have to get her some big girl underwear pretty soon. Hopefully, she'll be ready before we run out of the current case of diapers!