Mommy, will you play with me? Or, how to trick your kids into working

Last week the two older kids had a day off from school because it was parent/teacher conference days. Frugalgirl2 is used to being at home by herself (well, Frugalbaby is here too, but she's not the same caliber of playmate as the older kids). Frugalgirl wanted to play Barbies but her older sister was doing something else and wasn't interested. Since I had to go the school for a conference with a teacher, I was trying to get as much housework done as possible before I left. She came into the kitchen and said "Mommy, will you play with me?"

I said, "Sure, what are we playing?" The answer was Barbies. So I took the dolls little arms and pinched them together around a spoon from the drainer and said that she was helping me put away dishes. To my surprise, Frugalgirl2 thought this was pretty funny and started using her own doll's arms as tongs to put away utensils. After we emptied the dish drainer and moved on to the dishwasher, I said Barbie was tired from all the work and laid her down in the utensil rack.

Then I decided that there was no way I couldn't take a picture.

Zoom zoom

Last night Frugalboy competed in his first Cub Scout Pinewood Derby! It was combined with a cake decorating contest. He unfortunately lost all his races by a nose but still had a good time. And the cake turned out great.

What will she get into next? or, Do you want some spice with that?

Some other things she has done during the last 3 days...

-climbed up onto my bed and squirted lotion all over my duvet
-found her sister's leftover hot chocolate and dumped it all over herself and the floor
-snuck out the back door multiple times to try and jump on the trampoline

I'm not quite sure how the next 17 years are going to turn out, just cross your fingers for me!

100th post!

This is my 100th post! I couldn't think of anything clever to write about, though, so you'll have to settle for pictures of what kept me busy this morning. My sister found out that she is expecting a baby boy so this cute pair of shoes is for her upcoming bundle.

Made from the free pattern by Heather Bailey.

I finished my 2nd Chemo Cap. This one is the Irish Hiking Hat from Nik's Knits. It's Red Heart Soft Yarn, which has a really nice sheen to it.

I committed to making 3 hats and the third one is on my needles, and I expect to make significant progress as I sit in the school parking lot for 20 minutes waiting in line to pick up my children, so that Frugalboy can be on time for Cub Scouts (versus being late and riding the bus). My knitting time usually consists of a stitch here, or a row there, so 20 uninterrupted minutes? Blissful. At any rate, I forgot to take a picture of the first hat before I handed it off to Heidi, who is organizing our charity knitting.

We expect that Frugalbaby and Tawny, the Frugaldog, will be fast friends their entire lives.

Cold enough for you? And miscellaneous photos.

A couple weeks ago we had a really cold snap. I took this picture one morning in the family room. The top temp is outside, the bottom one is inside. That room typically stays about 10 degrees colder than the average house temperature. That's why we're planning on tearing down that room. It leaks like a sieve.



That ice is on the inside of the sliding door. This door freezes shut and if you want to get out, get the hair dryer. We just used another door most of the time.




The eggs froze so solid if one happened to get left in the coop overnight, that they expanded and cracked when they froze. This egg sat on the counter for a couple hours because I forgot to take care of it when I brought it in, and the top half of the shell lifted right off when I picked it up.



These pictures were all taken the same day.

And for the miscellaneous pictures...(not from the same day)

Occasionally Frugalbaby will pull the little potty out from under the bathroom sink. I encourage this sort of behavior but thought it was funny when she bent over as if she were praying to the plastic gods.



The advantage of being short is you can crawl into the dog's house to get her toy to stuff a treat in. But sometimes the dog decides she is ready to go in her house before you have a chance to get out. You're really lucky if your mom left the camera close enough to grab in time to get a picture.

Oh my heck

I have to post something just to get my whiny birthday post from getting top real estate!

Random events from the past few days...

Frugalbaby weighs 24.4 lbs and is sticking consistently to the 50- 75%ile growth curves.

I knitted up this sweet little soaker in an hour the other night. It's already being put to good use. On my keychain!

The Frugalboy got to spend his first day at the Challenge Center, which is our school district's gifted and talented program.

I got a new vacuum. It really sucks.

Christmas Nirvana

For the third year in a row, I have achieved what I like to call Christmas Nirvana. This is what happens when you thoughtfully choose your childrens' gifts, and don't give too few or too many.

There is a fine line when it comes to how many. Too few, and they won't have enough to keep them busy. Too many, and they think they got short-changed because they started feeling entitled to lots of gifts. Plus, they get overwhelmed and don't know what to play with first.

I am afraid that I have reached the turning point with the Frugalboy, though. He's getting old enough that his gifts aren't just toys. They are things like fishing poles and tool boxes so he doesn't have as many things to "play" with on Christmas morning. He's complaining of boredom already, and wants to go shopping to spend the rest of the money from his grandparents.

The girls are completely content playing with their dolls and dress-ups. I carefully gave them complementary gifts so they could play together.

But the days are long and rainy and there's only so long until they get bored.

There's only 6 more days until they go back to school. Not that I'm counting. What I am counting the minutes to is Saturday, when I get to go out without any children and sit and knit and chat with the ladies in my cloth diapering group. Saturday. At 11:00. Did I mention that the kids are staying home?

On the knitting front, on the needles right now I have a Lilac Perdita for my sister's birthday. With cream crochet cotton like in the picture. On another set of needles I have some corn that I gave up on for a Christmas gift because I wasn't getting it done fast enough. I hope to get the bracelet done soon, because her birthday is January 5, and start on some longies for Frugalbaby in the softest merino I've ever felt!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Our first significant snowfall this season.





















There's nothing like celebrating the first snow with a good bounce on the tramp. (yes, the frame is bent from the tumble across the yard--we plan to buy a new one in the spring)

Better late than never

I took this great series of photos last spring and never got a chance to post them. We happened to go to the library for storytime on Arbor Day and they were handing out free tree seedings. So that evening, Frugalgirl2 and Frugaldad went out to the corner of the pasture to plant her tree. There were already 2 trees just like it planted there from the previous Arbor Day, so hopefully in 20 years it is a nice shady corner.

The Magical Age of Eight

We had a momentous occasion at the Frugal Farm this weekend. I mentioned the Frugalboy's birthday before. On Saturday he was baptized a member of the Church. Everything went well. Frugaldad's parents and all his siblings and their families came for the weekend. I bought the Frugalgirls matching winter dresses. They were adorable. We (the girls and I) sang the opening song at the baptism. Well, the girls mumbled and I cried. Oh well. I shouldn't have said I would sing, and when we were practicing and I couldn't get through the song without tears, I should have known better. I guess they just won't ask me to sing anymore?





Frugaldad and Frugalboy before they headed to the church for the baptism




Frugalbaby won't hold still for a picture yet

Portrait

It's all in the presentation

That's what all the top chefs say, isn't it?

Every kid likes pasta, right? Not the oldest Frugalgirl. She'll eat macaroni and cheese but if you put any other kind of pasta on her plate, no matter the sauce, she complains.

But last night, it was different. With regular spaghetti sauce, I served Campanelle instead of spaghetti. I advertised it by saying, "Look at these pretty noodles. They kind of look like flowers, or bells. Aren't they pretty?"

And since my girls love all things pretty, she ate 3, or even 4 servings. And she asked if I would serve the pretty noodles every time we had spaghetti.

Lest I forget...

We've had the last birthday of the calendar year, the first Frugalkid, Frugalboy. He has turned the magical age of 8. We had spice cake with caramel frosting again (it's a family favorite, and though I pushed hard for pumpkin pie, he wanted cake) and it turned out fantastic again. (yes, we forgot the candles before we cut the cake...we had already sung before the presents so he just got 1 instead of 8)

I've been doing a lot of thinking about his birth lately and sometime soon I'll post his birth story and the things I've been thinking about. Happy birthday, Frugalboy.

Halloween Costumes

I apologize for the poor picture quality.

You've had a birthday, shout hooray!

Though she wasn't quite sure what to think of the candle...or all the people singing her name. She did enjoy the cake, however, and ate all the frosting off of it. The frosting, if I may say so myself, turned out fabulously. The cake was a spice cake with caramel frosting, which is a cooked brown sugar frosting, and it was perfectly smooth (instead of grainy, how it sometimes turns out). Sadly, the cake is all gone.

The presents? A ball. One of her favorite things. And a balloon, also one of her favorite things. Like I've said before, kids don't need useless pieces of plastic that will eventually be thrown away. She was delighted with her gifts.

Being a mom sometimes makes you use words like...giddy

I teach my babies a little bit a sign language. Just a few simple signs to help things along. I have taught Frugalbaby the signs for milk, more, and all done. She uses all done almost every time she eats but usually uses the word for more and only signs milk if she has given me other signs of wanting to nurse and I ask her if she wants milk. I have shown her the sign for please several times but she's never used it. It's been quite a long time since I signed please to her. Today she was sitting in her high chair eating lunch. I was giving her tiny cubes of cheese a few at a time and spoon feeding her bites of canned peaches. After the first bite of peach, she wanted more. I said to her while I signed more "Would you like more, please?" And she signed please! I was just....well... giddy with excitement! And then she signed it again! And again!

And that reminds me of some more photo blogging I didn't get to yet. I had a half-bushel box of peaches sitting on the kitchen floor a couple weeks ago and Frugalbaby crawled up to it and took out a big peach and took a bite. I decided that I'd let her have it. So I put her in the high chair with it. She ate almost half of it. She loooooves peaches! And isn't she beautiful?

Onion Braid

I dug up my onions yesterday (I am done gardening. If it frosts, I will conveniently forget to cover my tomatoes) and since they still had their tops I made my first ever onion braid. I had Frugalboy hold it up for the picture. (Because I didn't want to be in it!)

Honestly!

I can't believe I forgot to come back and blog about Frugalgirl1's birthday. Poor girl keeps getting slighted because the last two years we've been on vacation on her birthday. We also were on vacation the year she turned 2 but don't tell her, or she might get some sort of complex. Luckily we don't make a big deal of birthdays, not usually having parties with friends, and she's easygoing, so she was totally ok with celebrating the next day. I found some pictures on the counter that she had drawn of cakes that said "Happy Birthday to Me." How cute is that? She is so proud that she can write stuff without asking how to spell it.

Her cake isn't my best work, but the chocolate frosting tastes like fudge though it is not, and the cake inside is dee-licious. And if you can't tell, it's a sunflower.

The Birthday

On August 6, 2002 I went visiting teaching in the morning. I took Frugalboy and Frugalgirl 1 to my neighbor's house. When I picked them up and came home, Frugaldad was home. Which, for 11 am, was unusual. Turns out he had been laid off. If you've never been in that situation it's quite unnerving. We were confident he could find another job, but how quickly? Thankfully, we weren't in a dire financial situation. We hadn't been the best about saving money, but we had enough to pay off our current credit card bill (like we do every month anyway) and we were about 6 months ahead on the payments for our truck. Unemployment payments covered our mortgage. Our freezer and our pantry were full.

We have some friends who live in California with their own business, and for the first time ever, they happened to be in town the next week and we had them to dinner. Conversation turned to business and the guys started talking shop, and decided they had a pretty solid idea. Since the kids weren't in school yet, and Frugaldad didn't have to go to work, we decided to take a trip out there for a week or so and explore the options.

We drove to Sacramento in one day, and the kids whined the entire time. I think that neither one of them slept longer than 15 minutes the whole day. I had the worst migraine that night! My period was due that day, and I get menstrual migraines, so I popped some Aleve, and figured I was late due to stress. My friend joked to me that night that she was just waiting for me to tell her I was pregnant again, since Frugalgirl was already over 2 years old, and there are only 20 months between her and Frugalboy. It was past due for me to have another one! I told her that NO, we weren't trying, and I wasn't ready for another one yet. Looking back now, I think I had undiagnosed PPD after she was born and I wasn't ready for that again. Besides, who tries to get pregnant when they don't have a job or health insurance? Birth control was my friend, and we were very careful.

But careful as we were, even the best birth control isn't foolproof. Especially not when the Lord says it's time for another.

The entire week we were in California and my period didn't start, I started wondering if I could be pregnant. The area was really rural so I couldn't just run to the corner store and buy a pregnancy test, so I just waited. We got home on a Saturday night and I waited until Monday or maybe even Tuesday to go buy a test.

And it was positive.

But I wasn't too worried. Frugaldad had been interviewing. I knew that I still had a few weeks before I needed to get into the doctor, and I'd never been high-risk or had a miscarriage. He ended up with a job offer a few weeks later, which he took, and I got into the doctor before my first trimester was over.

Even though he had a job locally, we still wanted to go into business with our friends in California, but it was complicated, since we'd have to move out there. Real estate in their area was outrageous, and with the pregnancy, I'd need health insurance right away, and we had to sell our house here....there were so many things.

We eventually did put our house on the market when I was about 6 months along, but things were slow. We kept it on the market for a long time. Frugalgirl 2 was born on May 22, 2003. Developments in the business eventually made us glad that we hadn't moved out there. But our house was still up for sale. Frugaldad's brother let us know that a house down the street from them was about to go on the market. The owner had passed away and the widow was moving out. The day it went on the market, we got an offer on our house, and we moved here to The Frugal Farm.

Heavenly Father sent that sweet baby just at the right time, so that we didn't rush into a business decision. And we were able to move here, where there's lots of space to roam, and provide our kids with opportunities to work and learn.

A few things I will always remember about Frugalgirl 2's babyhood. She was always a fussy nurser. In the middle of the summer, if it was too hot, she'd go hours without eating. It was so frustrating! Then one day in the middle of winter, when she was almost 8 months old, she went on strike. She wouldn't nurse at all. And she wouldn't take a bottle, either. I pumped with my Avent Isis pump as much as I could, and supplemented a little with formula, and fed her with the only sippy cups she'd drink from. After a couple weeks, my supply was nearly gone, and she was so fussy from the formula. I decided to buy a double electric pump and pump regularly. So until her first birthday, I pumped 3 or 4 times a day and had enough to give her breast milk for all but one feeding. She ate solids well, which helped. Pumping all your baby's milk gives you an appreciation for the convenience of breastfeeding (plus it's practically free--I was spending $40 a month on formula, and only 25% of her milk was formula).

Once she started walking, she became the child who fell. I can't even count how many bloody noses and lips she had.

But she was my best potty trainer. When she was 22 months old we were done with diapers. I attribute it both to the fact that I had switched to cloth diapers when she was born, and I started early.

She says the funniest things, and we love her. Frugaldad loves it when she climbs into our bed in the night and sleeps back to back with him. He calls her his "sleeping buddy." Just this morning after she put down her milk cup, she said "Thank you, Mommy, for making delicious food."

She decided she wanted a Barbie cake, but I didn't have time to drive all the way into town and find one of those cake-pick Barbie things, so I hit the local discount store and I got a little doll instead. And here is how the cake turned out.


I'm afraid I'm one of those moms. Some day I will pull all of the pictures off the old hard drive and devote an entire blog entry to cakes.

Happy Birthday, Frugalgirl!

Apparently, you CAN buy love

Last year when Frugalboy was in kindergarten, I was able to spend at least an hour a week in his classroom, helping kids with reading, math, etc. I would go while Frugalgirl1 was in preschool, and my sister-in-law and I traded babysitting, so she'd keep Frugalgirl2.

Fast forward to this school year. Frugalgirl1 started kindergarten, but with a different teacher. Frugalboy was in first grade. Both teachers didn't seem to need as much help in the classroom as last year's teacher. Plus I was hugely pregnant. I didn't want to commit to anything regular because I knew that having a newborn would make it impossible to be in the classroom often. So because of the enormous load of guilt that I feel for not volunteering in their classrooms, I find other ways to help out. Usually it involves time at home. For example, for Frugalboy's class I put together a themed basket for the school's auction. For Frugalgirl's class I cut out hundreds (well, maybe dozens) of paper hearts and took them in for the kids to make Valentine's cards. When their teachers send home notes saying they are in need of tissues, erasers, or antibacterial hand gel, I try and send what they need the very next day.

Frugalboy's teacher does some sort of reading program (if I spent time in the classroom I might actually know the details) wherein she rewards the kids with Tootsie Pops. I have sent a bag or two to school throughout the school year. A couple weeks ago, Frugalboy told me that they were out of Tootsie Pops and needed more. So last week while I was shopping at one of my favorite stores for Frugalgirl2's birthday present (and I know I still haven't blogged about the birthday--I downloaded the pictures off my camera so I haven't forgotten about it yet) I walked down the candy aisle and saw a huge box of Tootsie Pops. I also saw the regular-sized bags of them, and because I am Frugalmom, I did some quick division in my head and the per-pop cost in the box was about 3 cents less than the bag. So I bought it.

The next day I sent it to school with Frugalboy, and when he came home he said that his teacher was so glad I'd sent it, and she had told the whole class, and they were all so impressed. A little more of the guilt lifted from my shoulders and I figured that was that.

Then yesterday he brought home a collection of handmade thank-you cards from the students in the class. Among them...

"Thank you for the Totsy Pops!!!"
"Thank you so much for the tootsy Pops. We need them so much!"
"thank's for the toosy pop's."
"Thank you for the Tose pops! Bring more"
"Thank you for the Tastie Tootsie Pops. You Rock!!!!!!!"
"Can you Bring more tusee pops plees!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??"
and my personal favorite:
"Dear Mommy, I hope you like the cards everyone is giveing you. gues what. I have six books to go until I get one."

I felt SO loved and appreciated!

So I guess you CAN buy the love of a first grader. With an $8 box of Tootsie Pops.