Elusive, fleeting, ever-changing dreams

I received a new Sonlight catalog this week. Let me tell you, I LOVE the way Sonlight is set up. It's not cheap, but it is filled with books to be read and discussed and worked with throughout the year. I love reading, my kids love reading. Why don't my kids want to  homeschool? Am I not as fascinating as their grade-level peers;o). Of course not, I am not silly. But still I can't help drooling over any curriculum set up on reading books and my secret is dream is Taryn and Caleb will come to me (I know it will never happen with Tierney) and say they really want to homeschool, and by the way, why don't we move to a nice, quiet place in the country. Although Caleb is in high school, all he'd have to do is study until old enough for the GED and then apply at OTC for a year or so. I don't know their minimum age. Eh well, if quiet Caleb would rather go to school, I guess it's a good thing to let him.
I know most homeschoolers work on conviction and make decisions for their kids, but I can't honestly say that pulling them out to be with me would be "best" for them. It just sounds like fun for me.
In all honesty, though, I am probably looking at it through rosy glasses. I mean...they'd be home all day. Begging for food all day. Yeah. That doesn't sound fun.

But options are always nice to have, even if they aren't used.

I can't believe it.

I am going to have five kids. Five. FIVE. I feel so white-trashy. I feel over-extended. I feel annoyed. I feel poor. And I want to move. Spring fever has sprung and I want to go somewhere else!

I loved my day today, and I want to work. But how can I leave a newborn? Not a three month old, but a fresh from the uterus two week old newborn? If I had planned another baby, I would have planned a much better time for it to come.

Sigh. Well. I am off tomorrow. That's nice.

My herbal tea

Now that I am back home, I have resumed the drinking of my "pregnancy tea". However, I am filled with questions. Does it really work? A study done found that Red Raspberry Leaf tea did shorten the second stage of labor (pushing the baby out), but only by about 15 minutes. Are claims that it shortens labor really true? I drank it with Caleb and with Taryn. Both labors were relatively short. I also drank it with Liam, though not as much, and although it seems his labor should have been short, it really wasn't. I was dilated at four cm for days prior to his birth, and I should have had a quick onset labor, but I spent days in "prelabor" or early labor. Even the active, very painful stage lasted 8 or 9 hours. That seems like too long for a fourth baby.       

But then I think of other factors which might have applied. I was a lot older when I had Liam than when I had the others. It had been nearly a decade since I had a baby, maybe it was like having a first baby all over again. Although I used EPO, I inserted it (and took it orally), but didn't use the turkey baster like I did with Taryn (bet you wanted to know that!). Did that make a difference? Did my "self-induction" methods bring about Liam's labor before it was really time, thus lengthening the labor? I don't like hospitals and their controlling ways-did going into an alien environment (biologically speaking) cause me to tense up and slow labor down?

Is it all just game of chance?  Either way, it'll be fun to compare this experience with my previous ones. Well,  fun in that painfully horrifying way.

Back to reality-Finding Space

I plan to post a vacation blog, however I am still waiting for my daughters to send me some pics from their phones which take much better pics than our digital camera.
For now though, it is nice to be home. I am getting back into the routine of constant laundry, planning all my meals instead of stopping at fastfood, and trying really hard not to scream at the teenagers camped out on my couch eating junk food and staring at Netflix all day. Why don't they go DO something? Don't they know they will be stuck at home for years after they "grow up" and have kids? Why are they wasting a sunny day? Should I get rid of Netflix? I just banned eating in the livingroom for now, but Karl won't back me up, and how long will that last? Karl's family is the type who had soda with dinner and ate bags of potato chips sitting on the couch at night. Yuck. And he thinks that's okay.

Having been to several different motels/hotels in the past six month, I am beginning to notice things I want for my house. I love the lack of clutter hotels have. Our suite in Florida was equipped with everything we would need (except bookshelves), and not one bit more. I am so tempted just to throw everything in my kitchen out and just START OVER. Fingerhut used to have these starter kitchen sets, I wish I could find one now.

I am still thinking about what to do with Liam's toys. I go back and forth. We are slowly collecting cherry finished wood, but someone gave us a crib that is more honey colored. Should I get a toy shelf to match the crib or what we already have? The toy chest will be in the dining room for now. Karl's parents gave us an oak dining table. I don't like oak-colored finish anymore (too country), we have a nasty oak particleboard desk and hutch, a cherry finished (solid oak) bookshelf, and white ikea cube shelving in the dining room. Plus the molding is all white finished. What to do? They have cheaper cube shelving at target in white which would be okay with the ikea and the molding, but I hate to start purchasing cheap stuff. But if I get higher quality stuff what color finish? Go to Wood U and paint some oak shelves white? Or stain them cherry? Or be thinking about the time when the little ones have a room of their own to share and go with honey?

I get so frustrated, I don't do anything.
So now I want to declutter everything, and I strongly suspect one of the cats peed on the diningroom rugs while we were gone. I wonder if I can get the kids to help me air them out on the porch? Hmmm. At least they were each only $30 at Kmart, and they are almost two years old, so if I have to throw them out, i would guess I got good use out of them.

I can't decide whether or not to make a room for Caleb in the basement. I think he needs the interaction of being close to the rest of the family-he is so reclusive. But I want the little boys to have their own room. But really, an affordable five bedroom house is not to be found on this side of town.
Urg.....I am glad I have a big family, I can't imagine the easy, boring manageability of just one or two kids (I remember having two, easy, but not as much fun as 3+), but the space problem is annoying.

The Mess and the Challenge

One of the major frustrations in having young children is having toys all over the place. I remember with relief, the time I cleaned the girls' bedroom out and realized-they don't play with toys anymore. I could get rid of all that cluttering crap! What a relief. But now that I have a toddler, I find the mess slowly creeping in. Of course, I had intended only to buy high quality wooden toys that wouldn't be an eyesore, but even wooden toys make clutter, not to mention that other people buy plastic stuff. Please note: battery operated annoying stuff has a tendency to "disappear" for long periods at a time, along with Disney stuff. My kids are really too good for Disney. Okay, okay, we do buy into Harry Potter stuff, but I have to draw the line somewhere. On Christmas, Karl's dad laughed with devilish delight over the annoying Cars book he bought Liam. He even said how much it was going to drive us crazy. It was very noisy with lots of buttons and no real literature or educational value at all. I don't know why he was so excited, because it's our house, and Karl and I frequently "lose" the book.

So, now I am left with this mess and a need to clean it up! The problem isn't just the way it looks. The mess makes it hard for Liam to figure out what to play with, and it's hard to clean around. I can't wipe down a baseboard if it's covered in toys. This leads to a buildup of crud in the corners. Since I already live in an older house with rough dusty edges and baseboards separating from the wood floor, it's a little gross.  So I  really feel the need for organization.

SO....Stay tuned to see what I do with all this stuff.

My baby isn't so babyish anymore... He still drools, though. Look at that sweater...