Wonderful Things

Tuesdays just seem to be bad days overall. R and I think maybe no one wants to drop bad news on someone on a Monday because Mondays are thought of to be bad days anyway so they wait until Tuesday. I feel it's only fair now that I've gotten all the things that suck out of the way that I move on and list all the wonderful things that are going on right now :)

• Baby M will be 10 months old tomorrow and he has the cutest belly laugh and it pretty much always happy. He has almost started sleeping through the night. Half of the time he'll sleep from about 7:00pm wake up for a bottle at 11:30pm and then sleep until 6:30am., but there are still nights on occasion that he wakes up between 2:30 and 3:30.
• We're loving summer! The weather has been pretty great with the exception of this week but even this week has been a nice break from the 90 degree heat that we had, though I love 90 degree heat.
• My flowers and R's garden are doing pretty well. We did some major repositioning of plants this spring and it's really improved the appearance of our yard. R planted a kick butt garden and we are hoping for a wonderful crop harvest come late summer, early fall.
• We got a brand new huge garbage container on wheels for our trash pick up days which is nice to have something brand new that will fit our three bags of trash per week, which is going to dwindle even more because we can recycle more plastics now. Before we could only recycle 1's and 2's and now we can recycle 1-7's, yay!!!!!! I just love recycling, it makes me feel so good. I know I'm pathetic for being excited about a new garbage can but hey, we don't get a lot of new things anymore so it's fun to get something new for free.
• I'm still pumping and getting a little milk so Baby M is getting breastmilk still which is exactly 5 months longer than Little man so I'm excited that at least I didn't lose total supply with my crazy schedule and not having the ability to pump when needed.
• I just finished Ne.w Moo.n and have started Eclip.se and am just loving this series. I didn't start reading it because I had myself convinced that I didn't like this genre, but something about Mey.er's writing style has been totally captivating. I also finished another book while waiting for Eclip.se to come in at the library, The Be.ach Hou.se by Jan.e Gree.n which was really great too! I just LOVE, LOVE reading!
• I get to schedule tutor hours early this week, today at 12pm so hopefully I should be able to get some online tutoring in next week. The summer is really slow but every three weeks I get to schedule early so I can usually get some hours for the following week :)
• I have a three day week this week babysitting so that's a nice break. The baby is really good and basically just sleeps all the time so things have been going pretty well.
• I've started running again and it feels really great!
• I've organized the pantry, junk drawer, hall closet, Little man's closet, my bins of bills and other papers that I've been saving, and some files. It feels so great to reorganized things so that the space doesn't feel cluttered and messy!
• I've had time to cook since I've been off for the summer so we've been having yummy lunches and lots of grilled food with homemade side dishes and desserts. Oh and we must not forget all the fruit salad I've been making, I heart summer fruit!!!!!
• Free strawberries! The people I babysit for have a huge garden with tons of strawberry plants and they've given us about 4-5 free quarts of strawberries from their garden!!!!

Well that's my list for right now. We are still hoping for the phone to ring about that job in Arlingt.on, VA but if not, hopefully we other good news about other jobs.

How Much Longer?

January was not good to us. There were several days that I didn't get sub jobs and then my tutoring hours were few and far between. The pay period ended today and I only ended up with 6 days. My tutoring money is WAY less than normal so needless to say I'm not sure if we're going to have enough money to get through the first couple weeks of February. I called WI..C today and made an appointment for February 21st because we definitely need the food. I also left a message for our D..HS specialist so we can set up a meeting and hopefully qualify for food stamps and bill assistance. In the mean time I'm still working on figuring out how to come up with some extra cash to pay our bills. It's really hard to not get sad and depressed. I'm having a really hard time lately. I have been allowing myself to cry in the shower but then after my shower is done, I acknowledge that times are not easy and I've allowed myself to feel bad for 5-10 minutes but for the rest of the day I'm positive and realize that all we can do is try our best. Here are some things that I am so happy about, it helps to focus on these things:

• Little man has developed a sense of humor within in the past couple weeks and just cracks us up several times per day. He amazes me everyday with the things that come out of his mouth.
• Baby M is rolling over from back to belly now. He's makings tons of new noises and sounds and laughs a lot. He's sleeping better and eating cereal, veggies and fruits now.
• The sunshine, though it's cold just seeing the sun and feeling a bit of warmth from it reassures me that spring will be here eventually.
• Our house...I really love it and it's comforting to know that it's filled with love and family memories. One of my favorite things in the house is a ceramic mallard duck, it looks like a big Christmas tree ornament and it's hanging above our sink. It belonged to my great aunt. We bought it for her as a gift and when she died I asked for it back so that I could always have her looking over us. She was a great and wonderful person, a teacher, and the most patient and loving woman.

Well I could keep adding to the list but I need to get to bed because we just put Baby M down and I want to get as much sleep as possible before his next feeding.

Things That Make Me Happy

There are so many difficult things that we're going through right now it's getting harder and harder to stay optimistic and positive. I decided to write a post all about the things that make me happy in order to lift my spirits.

• I have two beautiful children and a husband that love me
• Baby M is sleeping right now and did a little better sleeping last night
• It's raining right now so the nagging feeling that I need to be outside is gone which is great because I have a lot of inside things to get done today
• We're having a garage sale tomorrow and Friday to make some money and get rid of things that we don't need
• R is at the unemployment office right now so keep your fingers crossed that we'll get some weekly money
• I haven't had to sweep the kitchen floor amazingly it's staying less messy
• I got 3 subbing jobs in the next two weeks, I had 4 but one just got cancelled
• I got all the bags from the weekend unpacked and put away finally!
• I'm eligible for my professional teaching certificate :)
• We haven't bought groceries in forever and I'm amazingly being creative with food and meals
• It's supposed to be in the 70's and 80's the rest of the week and this weekend
• R made the best dinner last night, a roaster chicken and sweet potato saute
• I was able to get a huge amount of coupons from the Sun.day papers so hopefully we'll begin saving more money when we buy groceries

Ok, well I'm sure there are many more things that make me happy but I'm on limited time since Baby M will probably wake up any time.

The Bright Side

I'm at a great point right now, pure happiness. I'm going bullet style with this:

• I'm getting medicine for my UT.I, though the lab screwed up and they aren't for sure that I have one, but just in case I'm getting the medicine anyway and then will stop taking it if I don't need it. I call back on Friday for final test results.
• I have completed a great deal this morning so I'm feeling very productive!
• R is cooking the most amazing dinners every night and I'm eating like a queen!
• We've found some promising job postings that he's put on his "to apply for" list.
• He's going to be off for the transition into our four person family which will be a nice way to start the experience!
• My brother isn't working and is offering to help out and stay with us for a couple weeks so that we have child care for Little man and some extra attention and help.
• We're going to have benefits and pay through Sept and benefits possibly until the end of Oct. so we'll for sure be able to pay the house payment through Oct!
• The school district we live in pays $90 per day for substitute teaching, which R can do if we need some extra cash.
• The school year is starting back up which means my online tutoring will be super busy so I can make extra money doing that too!
• I made dentist appointments for R, Little man, and myself in Sept before our insurance runs out with enough time for follow up appointments if need be.
• The weather is glorious!!!!!!
• I got the best recipe for Deep dish Apple pie and can't wait to make it tonight with R. He's better at making crusts than me so we're going to work together :)

I'm sure there are many more things but those are just a few that are making me happy today!

My Lovely Discovery

So today was just blah. Little man is somehow getting a green goopy nose and cough again, though he just got over a little cold at the beginning of the month, I wasn't feeling the best today (very, very tired lately!), and ants are overtaking my house again (seems like Friday is their scheduled day). I did manage to take a nap while Little man was napping so that improved the way I was feeling a bit, but my lovely discovery made my day!!!! I had purchased two mini black and white cookies from Sta.rbucks before our train ride home from Chicago. They were packaged so I put them in the zipper pocket of my suitcase so I could save them for later. Well later happened to be about 10 minutes ago when I finally finished unpacking from our trip. There, in the small zippered pocket was my happiness and bliss waiting to be eaten with a tall glass of milk. I feel amazing right now and I'm actually happy that something as simple as two little scrumptious cookies improved my mood as much as they did. I love how it seems as though all things happen for a reason!!!