Sewing Saturday

As I type this David is busy sewing patches on Kyle's new Tiger Cub uniform...and yes, you read that correctly, my awesome husband is sewing, and doing a great job at it!

After Kyle tried on his new uniform (the one with the orange) I pulled out David's old Cub Scout uniform for him to try on and it was almost too small for him - and David probably last wore that shirt in 5th grade - and Kyle's only in 1st grade! My head is bouncing with dollar signs for the gallons of milk and mountains of groceries Kyle is going to eat when he's a teenager!

Boring?

My friend Heather's comments to my last post got me thinking ... do we all eventually become "boring?" I mean there are just some people in this world who really are boring from the start. Who live their whole life in one town, surrounded by the same people and get sweaty palms just thinking about going somewhere new. Me? Nope - left the hometown at age 18 and never looked back. Traveled, did crazy things, met interesting people, wasn't afraid to take a chance and have very few regrets. Maybe that's why I'm finally growing comfortable in my own skin and with the day-to-day routine of my life. I had the chance to get out, spread my wings and find out more about the person I'm meant to be.

Until fairly recently I struggled with the urge to point my car in one direction or another and just keep driving. I had to fight an internal battle and remind myself that life really is about mortgages, groceries, a job, the mundane. Maybe this is just the steady line of my life...no real peaks or valleys, just a nice hum. I try not to project into the future too far...okay, I admit I am projecting a bit into the future to June 2008 when we are done, done, done with child support, but that's just because I have a five year plan to stay financially fit and find a job that allows me to be home with Kyle during the precarious middle school years. But always waiting to get to the "when" can be a real roadblock. I have an acquaintance who is living her life waiting for the when - "when we pay off the Toyota," "when the kids are older," "when I win the lottery." She's just not happy being in the here and now - enjoying that steady hum. She wears me out and I leave our lunches feeling less than great.

But hey, I still listen to Justin Timberlake, watch stupid, funny movies and television and love being home with the family instead of out at the bars or visiting some exotic locale...of course I would really love a magazine and catalog night with dear Heather!!!!

Sunday Surprise

Two things that always get me...three-day weekends when we have no particular plans and Sunday afternoons when we have no particular plans. I think the three-day weekend thing is because we have a pretty routine life, not boring, just routine. So, when we have that extra day thrown in the mix and nothing to really fill it, I get punchy, grouchy and well, just a bit mean. I need a purpose to my day - something to look forward to. As for Sunday afternoons, I'm usually okay until 3:00-4:00 rolls around. Then it seems like a long time until bath, stories and bed...and it also seems that Kyle suddenly becomes "starving" - he bugs me like every 10 minutes asking for a snack. Even...after...I...have...given...him...a...snack!

Today was a blessing! The weather (for the first time in months and months) was gorgeous; 75-80 degrees with low humidity, and that's saying a lot in Georgia! We met my friend Carolyn at a new-to-us playground and the boys played like crazy. They ran all over and put on funny little skits for over an hour. Then Carolyn invited us to ride in her new Saturn Vue (quite nice!) while they did a couple errands. The best of which was a stop at Party City - Kyle is a Halloween fanatic and they've started putting out all the costumes, etc. After she dropped us at our car, Kyle and I went to the library where we ran into my friend Jennifer and Kyle's first-grade teacher. After picking out several books (including Kyle's first Junie B. Jones book) we spent time doing some puzzles and looking at videos. Then we had a snack at the library coffee house and talked about odds and ends. It really was a surprising Sunday for me. The day went by quickly and I felt happy and satisfied with the day.

Wednesday

I'm not sure who "mega man" is, but Kyle devoted almost a whole afternoon recently to the creation of his Mega Man outfit He carefully taped together paper, colored and cut the paper "just right" to make this ensemble. I would occasionally be asked to "hold this" but for the most part it made for a relaxing time for me - I just sat in the chair flipping through a magazine and watching him work out of the corner of my eye. Such concentration! I talk to myself (a lot!) when I'm working hard on a project - my office neighbor has actually learned to tune me out and I've learned to preface my conversations with her by using her name so she KNOWS I'm talking to her and not just myself. Kyle concentrates by standing up - he works better when the chairs are pulled away from the table and he can move back and forth easily to see his project at all angles. Of course in the left-brained compartmentalized world of school, this does not work so well. But that's a whole other post!

Change in plans -

Well I was about to post about my new 10-minute organization plan, but just as I sat down to type, Kyle came zipping downstairs to inform us of his loose tooth!!!!! I know it's the perfect time for him to start loosing teeth, but I'm not going to lie and say it doesn't make me sort of sad. Just another step in this whole growing up and away thing. I'm just stunned at how fast it all zips by!

Okay, back to my new season resolution. I figure that since fall is here and I'm on a home improvement bender, I would start doing a little more organizing and list making. Tonight I took the time while Kyle was in the bath to empty out my gift wrap tub and separate out all the various gift bags from the rolls of wrapping paper. I even grouped the gift bags by type or purpose. Woo hoo. Now of course I realize I need ANOTHER tub just for the gift bags...but that's really the fault of Dollar Tree, they have such darn cute bags for a buck that each time I go in there I add to my collection.

My guest room is really in a state of nothingness. I painted the walls a lovely chocolate brown, set up the guest bed, and bought a new comforter and shams, but then I stopped. I need some accent lighting, some sort of window covering other than a mini-blind, sheets to match and I really need things on the walls and organize the closet so it's usable by a...well, a guest. Right now the closet holds luggage and our aerobed. So it's not overwhelmingly full of junk, but I think there is a better location for those items! So I'm off to Bed Bath & Beyond (armed of course with a 20% off coupon!) to try and perk up the room. Which I probably shouldn't do until I actually finish the downstairs bathroom. As most of you know - too much disarray makes me VERY grumpy!

You Read to Me and I'll Read to You!

Kyle split his kindergarten year between two different schools last year because of our move to Columbia County and after the move, the homework situation went downhill. The only homework he ever had was reading and sight words from these incredibly boring black & white "Jack & Jilly" readers that pretty much made ME want to poke MY eyes out. We struggled nightly to get Kyle to move through the stories and practice the sight words. We tried everything we could think of to sweeten the homework pot...to make it less annoying for all of us.

What a difference first grade makes! He has spelling and vocabulary words to work on, math worksheets to do, and has this awesome reader with colorful illustrations and helpful follow-up questions for parents. Kyle always chooses to do the math homework first (weirdo!...okay, I only say that since I'm a math dyslexic) and doesn't even complain that much about having to write the spelling words three times each. BUT what I can't believe is how much more excited he is about reading! They still have the horrid Jack & Jilly readers, but they stay at school to work on during group time. Kyle is truly becoming a reader and it blows me away. He's supposed to read to us for 15 minutes every night and it flies by - he's getting into the cliffhanger and is starting to understand that reading is a way of putting your imagination into words. I find myself getting ready to help him sound out what I would consider a difficult word and he breezes through it...that little stinker knows a lot more words than I ever gave him credit for!

Our friend, Reid, who will be 13 soon, is kind of my inspiration when it comes to reading to Kyle and allowing him to be more artistic. Reid wrote this series of books when Kyle was a baby and the main character was named "Kyle" - they had these great illustrations to go with them and I just remember Reid's pride when I would come over and he would show me a new "Kyle" book. I know boys get such a bum wrap sometimes whether it's because they have "ants in the pants" or are too boisterous - but there are a lot of great boys out there (including my own) and I'm going to try and be more mindful of finding something positive about them all!

Home Improvement...

At some point today, between Walmart, lunch, and an afternoon birthday party for one of Kyle's friends, I plan to start priming the downstairs bathroom. It took a couple days of joint compound, but I finally got the wall where the vanity was fairly smooth. Of course there was the mishap with the shop vac when I started to vacuum up all the drywall dust before realizing that the filter was NOT in the shop vac and I was blowing the drywall dust all over the downstairs. Oops! One small mental breakdown and a two-day break later I'm ready to go! I've decided on the tile and the new vanity...yep, new vanity. As it turns out a pedestal sink won't work - at least not one in our budget. The water valves are too far apart and we would have to get a wider pedestal...more along the lines of a special order.

Pictures later!

UPDATE: I knew updating this house was not going to be easy when within the first two days of renovation last fall I found out that every bit of wallpaper in the house and been pasted directly to the drywall...no primer. And that every wall that didn't have wallpaper had been painted directly onto the drywall...no primer. So it should have been no surprise to me that they had sprayed the ceiling texture directly onto the drywall...no primer. Sigh! Somewhere along the line I decided to go ahead and paint the ceiling so while I was cutting in with the Kilz I put some on the ceiling around the edges...when I went back later to take down the exhaust fan cover I noticed that the ceiling texture was coming off in all the places I had painted! Crazy. So instead of getting the first coat of primer on everything, I ended up scraping off all the texture on the ceiling...which while messy actually makes me happy since I really hate popcorn ceilings! No worries though, I don't expect to suddenly start scraping all the ceilings!!!! One room at a time...that's my motto!