I'm taking a break (it's 12:30AM) while I wait for the dishwasher to finish it's cycle and another load of clothes to dry and getting in a little blog time. I just finished off two cups of coffee so I should be good to go for awhile.

Michael had a rough night again last night and was awake from 10:30 to 1:30. So far tonight he seems to sleeping much better. He's tossed and turned some but never woken all the way, so that's good. I still haven't figured out what causes the restlessness at night. It seems random and he never really gives me answer when I ask him what's wrong when he wakes up crying. Most of the time he says nothing hurts and when he does say something hurts it's hardly ever the same thing twice.

Today was the busiest day with children so far this week. At the busiest we had ten daycare children ranging in age from 9 months old to 11 years old. But things went smoothly for the most part.

One of our 4 year olds did have a bout of tummy trouble that caused him to throw up three times. After he rested a little while he seemed to be feeling much better and was really annoyed with me because I wouldn't let him get up and play in the play room. Instead I had him stay quietly on the couch in the living room and watch tv. I thought it would be a treat for him because the younger kids rarely get to watch tv, but I guess not.

One of our two year olds recieved his formal diagnosis of autism today. He was evaluated at the Kluge Children's Rehabilitation Center. We all expected this diagnosis and now hopefully more services will be put into place for him. He's been recieving therapy twice and month but needs more. He's a sweetheart but recently more challenging behaviours have been presenting themselves and he and his family need all the support they can get.

It's been really cold and windy here the last few days with temperatures in the teens and the wind chill even worse. Now we're expecting 3 -5 inches of snow tomorrow and I have to admit I will be glad to see it. Brown cold winters depress me. If it's going to be cold I want to see some snow. I've been watching the radar on WeatherBug and the snow is moving up into this area from the SouthWest. It should start snowing here sometime during the early morning hours.

And now it's time for me to go check on the dishwasher and see if I can unload it and start another load of dishes. I got behind today and the dishes piled up.

                                         

                                 ~ Love, Live, Laugh and Learn~

                                                                   ~ Rose~

Thanksgiving Day

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope everyone else did too.

Thaksgiving morning we picked up Doug's daughter and she joined us for a trip to Doug's parents home.

The girls were goofy, Austin slept, and Michael just enjoyed the ride. Michael does really well even though it's a fairly long ride - about and hour and a half. A couple times he did ask Doug if he could find Pawpaw's house. I always enjoy the chance to get out for awhile and this time I took a couple pictures of the scenery.

We had a delicious Thanksgiving Dinner prepared by Doug's mother. My favorite parts were the dressing, and the pumpkin pie. Oh, and the pink jello salad. I didn't get any pictures of the meal, I was too busy enjoying it.

The weather was nice and the kids had a lot of fun playing outside.

Amanda had the camara (actually my phone) part of the time and I found these pictures when she gave it back to me.

Can you tell she loves these boots?

And this is my favorite.

It was a great day.

Today went much more smoothly than yesterday although it was still very busy. I was just updating the log book and realized that over the course of the day 18 different children were here in childcare. Then with my own three added to the group it makes a total of 21 children ranging in age from 8 months to 12 years. As I write this at 8:45PM there are still four here. Two will be leaving around 10:30 and two are staying overnight.

•  

A friend stopped by this morning just to say "Hi" and brought along sausage biscuits from Hardees for both of us. It was such a positive way to start the day. Since it's hard for me to get out sometimes she occasionally just stops by just to chat.

•  

Doug took Austin and Michael to the child/youth program at church this evening. Austin's friend Tristan went along this time. This is my weekly break from Michael, who always does wonderful and charms everyone in church and then reverts back to the same oppositional behaviour as soon as he comes home. Although the last few days he's been quick to say he's sorry after an episode, often on his own.

•  

Micheal and I made homemade finger paint early this morning fully intending to use it today but somehow our plans kept being derailed and we never got it out. But we sure did have fun mixing the colors anyway.

•  

And that's about as exciting as it gets today. I'm hoping to hear something a little more definitive about the house tomorrow. Like I said before, I am not very good at this whole waiting thing.

This and That

• We have much more hope right now that  the house we are hoping to buy really will be ours. I'm not good at waiting for answers and it's been rough waiting since Thursday evening for them. But finally this evening we were able to talk to someone and it looks like it's going to happen. Not set in stone yet but hopefully heading that way. I'm excited again.
• I took this picture yesterday to commemorate the joy of seeing brother and sister getting along. Unfortunately it didn't carry over into today. I know they love each other but Wow! They can really argue!

• We are happy that two more new children joined our crew this week. Kansas is 7 years old and is here 2 -3 evenings a week and Jayden is 15months old and here 6 mornings a week.
• But I was sad when this morning, the very first morning that Jayden was here, he fell and bumped his head on the door frame resulting in a rather larger goose egg on his forehead. Why do these things always seem to happen on the first day?
• We had two children out sick today. I hope they feel better soon and we see them tomorrow.
• Our new history book The Story of the World Volume 1 finally arrived. We started it yesterday and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately our afternoon school session was interrupted so we didn't get to read any more of it today. We were able to get math, reading and Bible done before I had to call an end to schoolwork for the day because of very cranky babies. I had planned to include history and literature today as well but it just wasn't going to happen. But tomorrow is another day and should be a much easier one. I sure hope so anyway.
•  
• This afternoon a friend of ours from church came over and had Doug help him work on his truck. Michael enjoyed going out and "helping."
• And now I think it's time for me to go make sure I have things set up to run smoothly in the morning. First child is scheduled to be here at 5:15AM.

Notes From the Last Few Days

• The last couple days have been frustrating.
• Everything was moving along smoothly on the house we are hoping to buy until Thursday evening when we hit a snag. Now we're very hopeful but uncertain if everything is going to go through or not. Waiting for answers is the hardest part.
• Amanda and Doug were both hit by a stomach bug this week. Amanda's started Wednesday night and Doug's Thursday night. It seemed to be a 24 hour bug. They are both feeling much better now.
• Mona was not so lucky and was unable to come in to work for 2 1/2 days. But we're glad she's feeling better now.
• Michael has been beyond difficult the last few weeks and I'm at a loss to know what to do next. Consequences and punishments don't seem to work. Extra time and positve attention doesn't seem to work. Ignoring doesn't seem to work. Today has been full of multiple temper tantrums, outright defiance, even a table turned over in a rage. He oftens sneaks out the door and runs away. Doug and Mona have been trying to take him with them often to give me a break which I greatly appreciate but I'm still exhausted.
• On a happier note, we had some delicious homemade vegetable soup for lunch that Mona made yesterday so I would have an easy lunch. For dinner we had homemade pizza that I made while Doug took the little kids outside to play. Yummy!

Meandering Through Saturday

All day I've been enjoying these roses that Mona brought with her when she came to work Wednesday. They are on a little shelf in the kitchen where I can see them while I cook and bake and feed the kids and clean up after them. Somehow they make me happy just to have them there to look at.

I tried some new recipes to today and they all turned out very good. I made Pumpkin Bread, Chili, and Amish Bread. The last few weeks I have been using the bread machine more and it's so much fun to try new reicpes in it. And I love the smell of baking bread. Another thing that makes me happy.

The rest of the day was spent with the kids and at naptime I printed the pages for our new circle time book and the pictures for our new wall display for next week. Most of what I printed came from one of my favorite sites for kids activities - DLTK Kids. Our letter of the week is Kk, the shape is circle, the color is purple and the number is 8. I printed several songs for the letter Kk and some pictures of things that begin with Kk, as well as some songs about dinosaurs  to compliment our dinosaur wall display. The only thing that did not come from DLTK Kids was our sign language lesson for the week. That came from Lesson Tutor.

Doug took trash to the landfill, went grocery shopping (Amanda and Michael went with him), did some laundry (Thank you!) and mowed the yard at our rental house. Austin slept until after 2:00 this afternoon and then I had Amanda go wake him. He's had a cold and was really sleepy yesterday, so I thought he probably needed the rest, but I also wanted him to be able to sleep tonight. Amanda spent most of her free time either playing with Toby and Scout (our cats) or on her laptop watching YouTube videos of WebKinz.

And that in a nutshell was our day. I feel like I just kinda meandered through my Saturday and it was good.

Catching Up Again - Our Somewhat Crazy Week

This past week has been a little crazy. In some ways not so great, in other ways wonderful, but either way very busy.

Tuesday we began our homeschooling year. We had a great day Tuesday and the kids really enjoyed it even though they weren't to excited at first. Math is our biggest challenge and it is done first thing in the morning and gotten completely out of our way before we move on to anything else. The other morning subject is reading and they are both loving the books they are reading. In the afternoons we are doing Bible, Science/Social Studies (alternating days), and Literature. We are also spending about 30 minutes each afternoon watching a video from Snag Learning. We watched 3 Points and I felt it really made all of us think about how fortunate we are and what role each of us has in making life better in some way for others.

On Wednesday we had two new kids start coming to daycare. Unfortunately I got up that morning and discovered that I had been hit with some kind of stomach but. There absolutely no way I could handle taking care of the kids so I had to call Doug home from work. I felt so bad doing that but Mona (my helper) had left early on Monday because she was sick and had not been able to work at all on Tuesday. I had no idea if she was coming in Wednesday or not but even if she was she normally doesn't get here until 10AM. This was 6:30AM and I new I couldn't handle things that long. Thankfully, Doug was able to leave right away and as soon as he got home I went to bed and stayed there until about 3:00 that afternoon. Also, thankfully, Mona was able to come in for a few hours and make lunch, clean up, and get dinner in the oven, before she had to leave again. I was grateful that the mother of the two new kids took everything in stride and understood these things happen and they were back the next day to a much more normal schedule.

Thursday evening shortly after Mona left for the day she had to turn around and come back because the radiator in her car developed a big leak. So Friday her son brought a new one and Saturday Doug put it in for her - with supervision.

Another wonderful fix-it project that Doug had to deal with when he came home from work on Friday was a stopped up toilet. It turned out that "someone" (translate that to Michael) had flushed the end of a paper towel holder (that I accidentally broke the other day and should have thrown away) and it was causing major issues. Lovely!

The church we attend just finished building a new addition and this weekend in celebration of that there were a lot of ativities going on all weekend long. We've had to miss most of it because of daycare schedules but we were able to go Friday evening to a concert by No Greater Love. It was great to get out for an evening and the music and singing were beautiful. We took our kids and some their friends and they had a great time as well. Michael was even out in aisle dancing for the last half of the concert. Also wonderful was getting see for the first time all the renovations and additions that have been going and I have to say the architects and builders did a wonderful job.

Amanda has adopted a stray cat the she originally named Lola. When we realized that Lola is a boy she changed the name to Toby. It was very malnourished and starving for attention and Amanda has been spending a lot of time nursing it back to health. She even bought him special food yesterday when she went grocery shopping with Doug.

 We have five daycare children so far today and three more scheduled to come later this evening but it has still been a pretty quiet and peaceful day. Hopefully the week is that way as well.

As of today all my school age children that I provide childcare for are in school. So begins the days of waiting for the bus, arranging drop-offs and pickups and homework. No homework yet but I know it's coming.

The silence here was almost deafening today. Well, I guess that's an exaggeration because there are still my own three even if no one else shows up but it was much quieter without a houseful of school age kids - mostly boys. Although, honestly, some of the girls are louder than the boys.

This happened to be one of those days when the preschoolers were either home with their parents, parents were working a late shift or, as in the case of one child, were coming late because of a doctors appointment. So we took advantage of the extra time this morning and did a lot of work upstairs. Amanda still has things to rearrange from her room change. Austin needed to just do some general cleaning in his room. And I had lots of clothes to sort through and put away and laundry to do. There were four big boxes of clothes that were given too us to pass on as needed, use for the kids or do whatever with. I knew a lot of them were Michael's size or the next size or two up and needed to be put in his closet. I'm so glad that's done now.

Michael took advantage of the fact that I was busy and decided to give himself a haircut with Doug's electric razor.

I had to laugh every time I looked at him until Doug finally gave him a haircut this evening. He had to cut it down really really short, but it looks better than this anyway.

The salon that was in business right behind us has moved to a new location. Today the salon owners were back to finish cleaning out and offered to let us have four bookcases, and a small table that they no longer had use for. I was more than happy to give them a new home and now I'm full of ideas of how I want to rearrange the playroom. But the actual rearranging may have to wait until next week when we're on vacation and I won't have so many little ones to work around.

I can feel myself getting excited about vacation and feeling less focused on the day to day work. I can hardly wait to sleep in, read, write, and work on some projects that I've been looking for a chance to tackle. We are also planning a couple day trips - to visit Doug's parents and to go to the zoo. We've never taken Michael to the zoo and I'm excited about seeing his reaction to the animals.

As I'm writing this Austin and Amanda are outside with a flashlight looking at all the spiders that have shown up to take advantage of all the bugs that fly around our porch light every night. Because it stays on all night due to parents in and out picking up and dropping off their children their is a steady supply of insects to fly  into the webs. Amanda said there are about 12 spiders out there right now. And now Austin just came running in to tell me he found "a humungous gathering of slugs" outside.  

And on that lovely note I will say goodnight. I wonder what adventures tomorrow will bring?

From Twitter 08-13-2010

• So glad it's Friday. I guess this is going to be a full week now with no helper.
• RT @Nicheology: Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow. - Doug Firebaugh
• just had a butterfly come visit the kids while we were playing in the yard. It . . .
• . . . flew all around their heads but stayed just out of reach. The kids were so excited!
• This naptime is a disaster. Little ones can`t sleep because older ones will not be quiet. They keep interuping naptime to say things like .
• "Someone spilled milk on the carpet" (2 drops), "I`m going to go rinse my mouth out with mouthwash now" (I really needed to know that?) .
• "I can't find my shoes" " The bathroom curtain fell down." Ugh!
• I was going to try to do the dishes while the little ones slept but no such luck.
• RT @AutismTips: There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child.There are seven million. (Walt Streightiff)
• WHY does my 3 year old turn the thermostat up to 90 degrees in the middle of summer? This is the second time recently.

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

From Twitter 08-12-2010

• I guess this is going to be day four of my helper not coming in. :-(
• Weather forecast says today will be another hot one with thunderstorms this afternoon. Looks like another inside day for us.
• Watching landlord load his truck up with paint cans. Wish I could believe he was coming here to paint.
• I ate way too much junk food yesterday. Today I'm eating heatlhy. Beginning right after I finish this bowl of Lucky Charms. ;-)
• I am seriously considering starting a blog called The Adventures and Misdeeds of Michael. lol
• RT @foldinglaundry: Sibling love: Anna (7yo) singing to Eli (4mos) "you're the #1 tooter but I still love you."
• One of Michael`s favorite activities right now is cutting paper and string.

• I let him do it in the afternoons at nap time (since he refuses to nap) as his special quiet activity.

• I wonder why the cat is so hyper tonight. He`s running around the house like a wild thing!

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

Edited to add photo.

Yesterday was a day of change with it being the first day in childcare here for one child and the last day for another. Welcome to our group Sebina and Gabe we will truly miss you.

We had a total of 13 kids in childcare (not all at once) today ages 5 months through 11 years. It was a busy day but good.

Fingerpainting, building,playing with the tool set, playing outside and finding lots of bugs (we had lots of school age boys today) were some of the fun things we did.

Yesterday evening Doug took Austin and Michael along with him to do some mowing at our rental house. On the way home they passed a tractor trailor that had tried to make a turn and went off the side a road a little. When the truck went off the road a tire on the trailor blew, causing the the truck to slide part way down a bank. They went back to see if the driver needed help. No one was injured but they stayed until help arrived and the truck was back on the road. Michael was one tired little boy when he finally got home and Austin was tired of taking care of Michael while they waited.

After the kids went to bed last night I did some cleaning. To keep myself awake and moving I listened to an audio book online. I found this site that has lots of older books recorded and archived. I listened to all of
A Message From the Deep Sea by R. Austin Freeman 

Not a whole lot has happened today. I think the most exciting thing was when we heard Michael run a paper through the paper shredder and then figured out it was one of the monthly invoices that Doug had gotten ready to send to Social Services. So now I have to call the social worker tomorrow and ask her to send a replacement invoice for us to fill out. It should be interesting explaining this one to her.

And that's about as exciting as it gets today. But tomorrow is Monday so I'm sure I won't get this lucky two days in a row.

Trying to Walk a Rat, Burnt Pizza, and More!

It's been cloudy all day and rainy this evening, but I am loving the temperatures. It is 67 degrees right now and the forecast says a high of 79 tomorrow. My kind of weather! The 7-day forecast is showing temperatures in the 80's the rest of the week with a 30% chance of showers nearly every day.

Austin's friend Aaron finally went home today. Before he left he said he "I may be back in a week, or two weeks, or three weeks, or four weeks, or next summer." I have a feeling he's going to be back long before next summer. He and Austin ordered some things off E-Bay that they are excited about so I'm sure he'll want to be back to play with them when they come in. Plus they have so much fun together. They've been staying up way too late though and today it finally caught up with them and they didn't get up until about 1:00 this afternoon. Austin said they slept 12 hours so that tells me how late they were up last night.

Michael was busy almost all day going places with Daddy. They started out at the laundromat early this morning (I'll explain why in a bit), then went to the grocery store, the landfill, Wal-Mart, PetSmart (more about this one in a bit as well), and then to take some groceries to a friend who is fighting cancer and unable to work right now. When he wasn't with Daddy he was pushing a stroller around the house. He told Gabe to get in and drink a bottle and then pushed him around the house.

And the trip to the laundromat? Well, Doug has been trying to help me catch up on laundry and finally decided the easiest way to do that was take it all to the laundromat and put it in the biggest washing machines he could find. When he came home with all that clean dry laundry it took very little time to get it all put away. And now we're enjoying the wonderful feeling of being caught up on laundry. . . . until tomorrow. Oh well. Sometimes it's worth it even if it doesn't last long.

And the trip to PetSmart? Amanda has been researching online how to train pet rats and decided she wanted a harness for her rats so she could walk them. So she convinced Doug (as in begged from the time he walked in the door from work Friday evening until they finally went this afternoon) to take her to PetSmart so she could buy one. We tried to put it on the calmest rat (Micki) this evening. Twice. But she didn't like it. I'm sure Amanda will go back online and get some more information on how to get a rat trained to wear a harness and keep at it until she gets it. That's just the way she is.

And now I'm laughing at myself because I just wrote a whole paragraph about training rats. Seriously? When did this happen! Sometimes real life IS stranger than fiction. I wish I had gotten a picture of it.

I did get a picture of this though. It's what happens when I get interrupted by wild kids and totally forget I put a pizza in the oven.

Thankfully we had three others so no one went hungry. And Austin actually ate part of this one just because he's goofy like that.

As for me, in between all these other fun things and lots of kids (seven daycare kids ages 6 months to 10 years, plus a couple extras just for fun) I worked on getting the menu and activity schedule and supplies ready for next week.

And now it's time to call it a day, read a few minutes and get some sleep.

Good night everybody!

An Awesome Interview, A Storm, and Other Ramblings

I had a great interview this morning with a mother and her three boys ages 8, 7, and 4. The boys were so well mannered and well behaved. They interacted well with the other kids and really listened well to their mother. I am so excited about having them join our group here. They will be starting here August 17, the first day of school. The oldest two will get on and off the bus here and the four year old will stay all day.

Austin's friend Aaron is still here. He came Friday evening of last week and is staying until sometime Saturday. The plan was for him to go home Monday but he asked and got permission from both his mom and myself to stay until Tuesday. On Tuesday he asked to stay until Wednesday. On Wednesday he asked to stay until Saturday but his mom said he had to come home today. This morning he asked again and she agreed to let him stay until Saturday. He and Austin are having a grand time and I enjoy having him around as well. Michael looks up to him like another older brother and Amanda treats him as well as she treats her own older brother - which actually isn't so great sometimes but. . . that's another story.

My helper left around lunchtime yesterday because she wasn't feeling well and called in this morning because she still felt bad. It was a really slow day anyway so it worked out well. I did end up ordering Domino's pizza and cheesy bread for dinner though just to make things easier. I hope she's feeling better tomorrow though. We miss her and want her to feel well. Get better soon, Mona.

A storm came through this evening that blew down some trees and there were a number of power lines down. Our lights blinked but came right back on. One of the kids was afraid of the storm and showed it by being hyper and trying to talk louder than the storm, most of the time right in front of my face. He was pretending that he was the repairman fixing all the electric lines and cable boxes, and telling me about every step of the way. I guess that was his way of feeling like he had some control in what to him was a scary situation.

Austin, Amanda and Aaron are at Bible school this evening. I'm glad they get to go and have fun but I will be a little glad when our schedule returns to something closer to normal. I'm a little too much of a schedule person sometimes, I guess it's my OCD kicking in.

Enough rambling now. I need to work some more on the schedule and lineup of studies for the new school year. I can  hardly believe it's just around the corner again. We won't start until the Tuesday after Labor Day but I have a lot of work to do between now and then.

Daily Adventures at Rose's House Monday July 19, 2010

Today started at 3AM when Michael woke up and crawled into bed beside me. He was very restless, swinging his arms around and tossing and turning. Doug couldn't go back to sleep so he got up, got ready for work, went to the store for milk, and ran an emergency call with the Rescue Squad before he even started work.

I dozed off and on between Michael's flailing around and then, when I thought he had finally settled down enough that I could get up without him noticing I slipped out of bed. This was around 4:50. By 5:30 Michael was back up and wouldn't go back to sleep. And so began another Monday.

It had been awhile since we got our the rice and beans for the sensory table. I put them in the freezer early this morning so they would be very nice and cold as an added sensory experience. The kids loved it.

We did some Math.

The kids enjoyed taking a close look at a grasshopper. It's hard to see but it's sitting on Gabe's hand. Gabe said he was having a staring contest with it.

The kids enjoyed playing with balloons during music and movement time. We ended up just doing a whole lot of moving with no music since the cord to my CD player misteriously disappeared. But it was fun anyway.

The letter of the week is Ff.

Queit time with music and books. And yes we did have music. I didn't find the power cord to my CD player but I did use my computer to play the CD.

We played two games of Memory this afternoon .  .  .

.  .  .  and then got out the craft supplies.

And here are some pictures of the fun they had during their free times.

It's been a good day, and fun day, a LONG day. I'm really hoping Michael sleeps well tonight. Not too sure how it's going to go though - he has already fallen out of bed once tonight.

And now I'm off to bed to get some sleep.