Life of the self-employed

Last week was my first full week of being self-employed. My first day started off a little rough as I had two day cares to find in the middle of a snow storm. I ended up running the van off the road and dislodging the headlight casing with the post I hit. When you have a 10 year old van with 224,000 miles on it, this is not a big deal. Then, after dragging my enormous bag of toys around to a couple of stops, I found out that I might not get paid for one of my sessions due to a paperwork glitch. It all worked out in the end and I have come to the conclusion that I still like working for myself. For the most part, I find myself less exhausted and yelling at my kids less often. I also have had time for some mad cleaning/organizing of closets and bedrooms. I'm convinced that some bachelor must have designed our house because it has hardly any storage space. I had taken the closet doors off the girls room to open up more space. That leaves two closets for a soon-to-be family of 5. And we are super efficient...meaning that I absolutely do not hold onto stuff that does not fit or we don't wear/use. You might say I am an anti-hoarder...which gets me into trouble sometimes (like recently when I threw away the case that some software came in. Am I the only one who didn't know that you need the silly product code in order to load the software onto another computer? An $80 oops) Still, we have to be super creative with space. So, Alina and Ethan will share the one bedroom closet, while Meagan shares the master closet with us. Chris says he's the only man in Fishers who has to share a closet with a 9 year old girl. He's probably right.

Alina is really writing letters now. Can write her name and then strings together "sentences" like the one below. She's also drawing real people. The picture below is of "mommy at school." That's me hanging on the monkey bars. The number 100 is written above my head because that's how old I am. That's gum coming out of my mouth because I'm chewing way too much.



Alina sometimes tires of my endless store of nicknames for her. I have recently taken to calling her "punky-doo". The other day she said, "Mom, don't call me punky-doo. I don't like that nick name. Please just call me cow." (apparently a much less offensive term of endearment)

We were playing memory the other night and Alina was getting a lot of matches. Each time she got a match she would say, "I am smart at this game...Chinese people are smart" (Not sure where she heard that...we definitely don't throw around stereotypes...luckily this one is pretty benign:)

I love the way that 4-year-olds misunderstand names for things and end up creating novel names for them. For years Meagan referred to Parmesan cheese as "Papa John's cheese". NiNi calls American cheese "miracle cheese." (we really like cheese) NiNi also remembered that we sometimes get big boxes of treats at Sam's club, in particular we recently got some ice cream sandwiches. When I told her they were all gone she asked if we could go to "Santa Club" to get some more. I guess going there is a little like Christmas, except nothing is free and it doesn't get delivered down your chimney. Now that would be nice. During a pretend tea party, Alina kept offering me a cup of "apple-tite." I thought she meant applesauce or apple cider, but she insisted it was a cup of apple-tite. When I asked her what apple-tite was she said, "You know, if you eat too many snacks you'll lose your apple-tite."

B-day girl and misc.

Alot has happened since Christmas...For starters, NiNi turned 4. We took a handful of kids to see "Tooth Fairy" at the Cinema Grill. Everyone loved the movie except the birthday girl who kept saying, "This is a loooooong movie." She also got a big-girl hair cut...said she wanted her hair like her cousin Mallory's. On another note, I am quitting my job at the nursing home. My last day is Feb 12th. One of my goals for 2010 was to be more "gutsy" so I guess this counts. I will doing First Steps as an independent provider in my own business. Translation: if I have no clients I don't get paid. It's really not as risky as it sounds since there is a huge shortage of SLP's in this area. I've been getting several emails a week since I opened up my availability. Plus, it will afford me alot more flexibility once we bring home our son. Speaking of our adoption, we had our first homestudy visit last week and they are offering to "rush" it since we went though this agency with the last adoption. We are most of the way finished compiling documents for our dossier...just waiting on our health physical appointments to roll around by middle of March. If all goes as planned we will have our dossier to China by late spring/early summer!

The girls have been saying some cute things lately. It's been so long that I've probably forgotten alot, but here are some funny quotes:

Meagan was talking about so-and-so being the most popular kid in school. Trying to make a point about the value of character I said, "You know, it's not always a good thing to be popular. Do you know who was one of the most un-popular people in history?" Meagan said, "You, mom?" "No," I said, "JESUS". Meagan said, "Oh, Jesus AND you?"

I had shut myself in the bathroom to temporarily escape the chaos of whining, screaming kids. NiNi popped her head in the door to make some kind of demand. I rudely cut her off and said, "NiNi, I need a moment." She said, "Ok, mom, but when you're done with your moment, can you come out?"

NiNi was playing with a stuffed animal and I heard her saying, "Rapido, rapido...puppy says rapido" Beginning to feel a little less guilty about the hours she spends watching PBS I said, "Oh, is your puppy speaking Spanish? What does rapido mean?" She said, "It means welcome to the dentist!"

I was reading a book to NiNi and she suddenly had to go to the bathroom. Not wanting to miss anything she asked, "Mom, can you pause that?"

This was a conversation my mom had with NiNi about time-outs:
NiNi: "Grandma, why are you sitting in the time-out chair?" (a big brown chair in the family room)
Grandma: "Oh, I didn't know this was the time-out chair. What do you do in time-out? Do you get to read a book or something?"
NiNi: "We don't do anything...you just have to sit there one more minute"
Grandma: "Is that it?"
NiNi: "No, and then you have to say sorry...I hate that part."

We got an idea from some friends of ours to have a "sabbath" each week....a day to "unplug" from the world and just be together as a family. I was trying to explain to Meagan the concept of a Biblical sabbath and how all the people rested and worshipped God and spent time together on that day. I said, Meagan, just think... if mommy and daddy weren't at work and you guys weren't at school and we didn't do any projects around the house, what would we have more time for?" She replied, "More time to watch TV!"

Now that NiNi is 4, she talks about all the things she can do (i.e. 4-year-olds don't wear pull-ups, 4-year-olds can take swimming lessons, etc.) She is also looking forward to other major milestones. According to NiNi...
When I am 9 I can snap
When I am 8 I can pour the shampoo
When I am 36 I can drive
When I am 19 I can have a boyfriend
(and she's absolutely right on that last one!)