Public Tansportation, How I Miss You!

Gas prices throughout the country are soaring.  It's costing more and more just to fill up even the most efficient cars.  My little car (which is thankfully pretty efficient) cost me $50 to fill up and the low fuel light wasn't even on yet.  It's a little scary to think how much I'm going to spend just getting to the places I need to go to for the next year.  It's a little crazy, and if the gas prices don't come down, I'm going to wish I could sell my car and get a cheaper one, but that would mean used with significantly less gas mileage.

Back home I didn't need to worry about gas prices.  I was able to take the subway or the bus anywhere I needed to go.  With a pass I could take as many bus or subway rides as I wanted.  There were some times when I took the bus somewhere just to go there.  Why not?  The bus would run whether I was on it or not, so why not take it, go on an adventure?  I used to make a point to take the bus and subway enough that I was saving money by buying a pass, even if I wasn't going anywhere I needed to go.  It was freeing.

That's one thing I miss here in Texas.  I miss being able to walk to the grocery store.  I miss being able to take the subway and just go anywhere I feel like going.  It was nice to have so much convenient and easy to get to.  I know living on public transportation wasn't always a great way to live.  It could be a hassle, especially with kids, but I still miss it.  It was still a more efficient way to travel and I loved having the freedom to leave without having to worry about the skyrocketing gas prices.

Instead of living somewhere with public transportation, I live in Texas.  Their idea of public transportation here seems to be nearly useless.  Perhaps in the city it's better, but in the area we live in it's entirely useless.  Instead you have to drive everywhere, and nothing is nearby.  Nowhere is really within walking distance and if you do choose to walk, people look at you like you're crazy.  It's really frustrating.

Boston, I miss you.  I miss the convenience of your public transportation.  I miss living in a walking city.  Texas will never stand a chance in comparison.

Sustainability Tip: Planning Ahead to Repurpose and Reuse

The other day I was going shopping for my kids for Easter.  We usually don't make much of a big deal over Easter around here.  My aunt sends all sorts of stuff for the kids for Easter (which is fantastic) so I don't make too much of an effort.  Usually I make a bigger deal about Ostara (the Pagan version of Easter).  The kids especially like that because it's a special family holiday.

This year I decided to do something different.  I'm actually going to make Easter baskets for the kids.  This year Easter was almost a full month after Ostara, so I wasn't able to find as much to put together for the kids this year.  Surprisingly they seemed to come out with a lot of things late this year.  Usually they've got stuff out plenty early, but I guess Easter isn't as big as I remember it being, or maybe in Texas it's just more of a religious holiday.  This year has been a little different, so we decided to do Easter instead this year.

As I went shopping, I had a few things in mind.  I wanted a focus on arts and crafts and things that could be reused.  Everything should have some greater purpose than just being something cool for Easter.  I'm trying to avoid candy, but there's going to have to be some favorites from my childhood.  I think it's important to hold on things from your own childhood.  That's how traditions are started.

When I arrived at the craft store, I had a plan.  I needed some Easter eggs.  My aunt usually sends some, but I wanted to have a few more on hand.  I'm going to be picking up some special things to put in the eggs from me, maybe some small things of paint, or perhaps I'll could put in small seed packets so we can start a container garden.  I've got some ideas.  After the eggs I moved on to some crafts.  I got a kit to make a foam critter wall hanging for each of their rooms, a little kit with an Easter egg ornament to color, and one special craft for each of the kids.  My daughter got a bracelet making kit and my son got a stained glass window set with Snoopy.  Last, I decided to actually get baskets this year.  I'd seen the spring buckets in the Easter section, but my aunt always sends some.  I didn't want to get the typical basket with the bright colors and the huge handle.  They're not terribly practical.  Instead I picked out some cute square baskets that happened to be on sale.  They're very similar to the baskets people use as organizers in rooms.

Obviously the crafts stuff has a purpose, but what about the rest of it?  I've already mentioned the egg shakers.  We're going to find some gravel and seeds to make some of our own.  The baskets are also going to become homeschooling baskets for each of the kids.  While the youngest is a little too young to have his own homeschool basket, I can keep it for when he's older.  For the time being, we can use it to put his blocks in there or something.

When shopping for holidays, it's best to think of things that can be reused in some other way.  Easter baskets are a great item to make other use of, especially if you shop wisely.  In my case I could get one in the colors each of my children prefer (well, a color my daughter at least likes because they didn't have purple).  If you choose your items well, they can be functional and fun.  All it takes is a little preparation!  Planning your seasonal purchases not only saves you money in the long run (because of those impulse buys), but also allows you to plan for the most reusable items!

Why I Do It

Today I decided I'm fed up with my daughter and her "I can't read!  It's too hard!" game.  I can't tolerate it anymore.  I'm seriously tempted to put her in school so she knows exactly how nice I'm being.  She screams at me daily that I'm mean because I expect her to read at the level I know she's capable of reading at.  She'll tell me she can't read a word she reads ten times every day because it's "too hard" and she "doesn't get it".  I'm just so fed up!

A friend of mine told me that I might be better just to put her in public schools, let her find out the hard way how easy she's really got it.  He has a point.  Being in school and having to work six hours out of every day, get up before the sun rises, and then come home to have homework on top of it all would be a great way to show her exactly how easy her two to four hours of homeschooling on a normal day really is.  She'll recognize how nice it is to eat when she wants, nap when she's tired, and take breaks whenever the mood suits her.  She'll start to understand how nice homeschool play dates really are.  There's a lot to be said about public schools in that regard.  She'll have so much less time to screw around the way she does.  It'll be nice for her to see that I'm not really being so mean after all!

That's when he added the part that made me want to scream with frustration.  This one phrase, no matter how who says it, always makes me want to scream.  They seem to think that this is such an easy and logical conclusion that everyone must simply agree!  "It will free up a lot of time too."

Really?  So, instead of getting up when my older boys get up, around eight in the morning, I'll have to drag myself out of bed at five am to get dressed, make sure my daughter eats breakfast, is dressed in an appropriate way, and has all the supplies she'll need.  After that I'll have to walk her down to the bus stop, or drive her down to the school myself.  Once she's done with that, I'm a little more free for a while.  I've got the rest of the afternoon, mostly, to homeschool my older son and manage to run all my errands,  Then I have to make sure I'm there to pick her up.  This means I have to give up homeschool play dates and field trips because I have to be home in time to pick up his sister.  If I was going to send them all to school, then I'd have two school drop-offs to worry about with an elementary school student and a preschool student.  I'd have to drag out the baby for both cases.  Then it would be time to bring the kids home and my daughter's incredibly frustrating fights over homeschool would start again with her homework.  By the time that was done I'd have to cook dinner and it would be time to send all the kids to bed.  I'd have to go to bed not long after that.  My life would be run around school schedules, days off, summer vacation, and everything else.  Then there would be possible calls about grades, behavior, getting my children into the programs they needed to be if they don't get into them.  Over half my day during the week would be run by school.  My whole life, in truth, would revolve around school.

Let's look at the flip side of this scenario.  As things stand I can get up with my kids around eight.  We spend the morning doing our school work.  In reality, homeschooling takes an average of two hours out of any day, though sometimes we push it and go for four.  We generally do that before lunch and the rest of the day is pretty free.  We rearrange our schedules as need be for appointments and homeschool events.  Sometimes we even skip school during the week all together because the time gets made up on weekends or over the summer.  We tend to work more in the summer than we do in the school year because it's just too hot and miserable to go out here in Texas.  We'd all rather just stay in when it's cool.  I go run my errands when I need to during the day, sometimes I even wait until after dinner so I can go by myself.  If I really need to I bring the kids along because it's a good place to learn some life skills.  You can learn a lot at the post office, grocery store, or wherever else.  We just take our lessons on the road those days.  Typically our home schooling is done while we're running errands rather than at home, so I end up being able to kill two birds with one stone.  I have more time to knit, write, relax, and I feel less stressed about everything because the only schedules I have to keep are those of my own making.  It's positively freeing to be a homeschooling family because I end up spending very little of my time dedicated to educating my kids.  On top of that, I end up getting a lot more "homeschooling" done than I intend to on any given day because we end up doing arts and crafts, play games, or get into discussions.  In truth, I only spend two to four hours actively educating my children on any given day, but my children are probably being educated close to twelve or thirteen hours on any one day.  Of course, it's hard to prove or estimate for certain because a lot of it is things none of us really spend much time thinking on, but there's no way to deny it's happening if you take a good look at our family life.

Then there's the cost of homeschooling.  Everyone says homeschooling is so expensive.  Many curriculums will cost you nearly a thousand dollars per child.  If you've got two or three kids to worry about, that's a lot of money!  That's a cost you incur every year, though in some cases you can get away with passing the books and assignments down if you're thrifty.  You just don't get any of the help with the costs from the company providing the materials.  There's the cost of arts and crafts supplies and other things that might not be included in your program as well, travel for homeschooling events, maybe the cost of a local co-op.  Community sports, art classes, and everything else that many homeschooling students do for socialization come at a cost as well.  If you think about it, homeschooling isn't always cheap, though there are some families that manage to be thrifty enough.  The truth is, you're never going to be able to homeschool for free.  There will always be costs for travel and supplies, but you can make do with a lot of things that are really inexpensive or all together free.

Public schools, on the other hand, are not as "free" as everyone thinks they are.  Public school comes with a lot of hidden costs.  School supplies in this area are more than a little insane.  Children are required to have two sixty-four color boxes of crayons last I saw.  They had requirements on glue sticks.  There's always going to be pens, pencils, sharpeners, and erasers.  I think they were required to have markers as well.  Each student was required to bring a box of tissues and Clorox wipes as well.  The Clorox wipes bothers me because I know what's in those chemical cleaners and I'm not comfortable with my child using them as though they were nothing.  There's the obvious need for backpacks, notebooks, paper, folders, and all of that as well.  Many of these items can't just be carried over from last year.  They need to be replaced yearly.  If you catch everything on sale you're easily looking at over a hundred dollars in school supplies to start the year for each child.  This always drove me nuts because I didn't understand why a child couldn't come in with a tin of last year's crayons and call it good.  It seems so wasteful to just replace the crayons every year because last years crayons work just as well as new ones and generally aren't all used up.  They don't even do anything productive with the old ones, such as use them to color wax for candle making.  It just seems very wasteful.

Yes, that still seems like a low cost in comparison to a homeschool curriculum, but if you look at it, a homeschool family can get along just fine with less than that.  After all, there's no real need for new backpacks, folders, and all of that.  You buy it when you run out or have a need for something you don't have.  All of that money spent on two boxes of new crayons of a specific count or higher every year could be put towards an inexpensive arts and crafts project or be put towards admission to some field trip.

Schools charge for field trips too, so school supplies aren't the only expense.  If the kids are doing something outside the classroom they have the cost of field trips, possibly lunch out, and other sorts of things.  That is, if a child is lucky enough to have their class go on a field trip.  It seems like down here most students spend their whole day in the classroom.  My kids go on far more field trips than your average school student!

So, after all of those expenses, you then have the cost of new school clothes.  Yes, kids need new clothes pretty much every year, but homeschool kids can get away with a lot more.  If my daughter wants to wear her nightgown to homeschool every day, she can.  If she only wants to wear hand-me-down stuff from her friends that's all ripped up, she can.  If she decides for whatever reason to shave her head or get a mohawk (which I kind of hope she never does!) she can without the school telling me I have to make her wear a wig.  Her clothes don't risk becoming a red-flag for the school's dress code if she's wearing jeans that were all ripped up, or that she or one of her friends have decided to draw all over because they felt like it.  There's no pressure to buy brand name clothing or something with Hannah Montana plastered all over it because it's trendy.  As a result, most of our new clothes have been hand-me-downs in all kinds of condition, and I don't care that my daughter's style seems to dictate "the more used and abused, the better".  It also means that I don't have to worry about having "school clothes" and "play clothes" for my kids because I don't care too much if they beat up their clothes.  Rips can be patched.  Stains aren't something to worry much about and in some cases almost seem to be badges of honor.  Clothes get retired when they're worn out, but it takes a lot of wear to put them into the retirement pile.  They see some great use before that.

In truth, I think I'm better off with my kids not being in school.  I get more out of all my time and energy spent.  My kids learn more even when I'm not trying to teach them.  The schedule is super flexible.  I spend significantly less money.  In the end, I think we're all happier about it!

He's Finally Got It Down!

My oldest son has been incredibly resistant to potty training.  It's understandable.  We've been moving around a lot.  There hasn't been a lot of stability in our lives.  We've been moving around a good deal over the past year.  Not all of the situations we've been living in have been the most peaceful.  For my special little boy that doesn't like anything but peace and calm unless he's the one causing it, it hasn't been easy for him.  As a result, diapers have been something he clings to.  It's like some kind of security blanket.  I knew it wasn't going to be easy to get him out of them, even though I knew he was more than ready.

Now, I know he's ready to potty train.  Every once in a while he would use the potty just because he wanted to.  We were making a lot of progress on a few different occasions, but he regressed, and he was never accident-free.  After a day or two of being pretty good, something would happen around the house and he'd regress.  It was incredibly frustrating.  Every time thought we were making progress, we'd have to start all over again.  What was most frustrating of all is he's good all night long and during naps without a diaper on.  I was beginning to feel like I'd be sending him to college in diapers!

In planning for Easter this year I asked each of my older two to pick one of the little stuffed Scentsy Buddies to go in their basket.  My daughter knew just which one she wanted.  She's had a baby lamb since her first Christmas so she needed the lamb.  We decided to get a frog for the baby.  Even they say they're for age three and up, I know my baby.  He's only going to get to play with it while supervised.  My older son had previously wanted the lion.  All of the sudden he changed his mind.  He wanted the elephant and nothing else would do!  Just to be sure and having had the elephant on hand since I've decided to do Scentsy as a side-job I decided to show him to be sure.  He not only loved it, but he took off with it, gave it the nickname he'd been calling himself for the past two and a half years, and decided he now wants to be called by his middle name.  I'm a little sad that he doesn't want to use his old nickname anymore, but it's nice to see that he's finally feeling secure enough to grow up a little bit.  It's a good thing!

Next thing I knew he was insisting he had to use the toilet like a big boy!  He went two whole days without an accident, so today we decided to do something a little bit risky.  We went to the store, did all our shopping, and stopped to have a nice lunch out in the fresh air and sunshine.  He went through the whole trip without an accident!  He even let us know he had to pee and went in a public restroom!  He said it was all because his elephant helped him do it.  If only I'd known that was all it would have taken straight from the start!  I would have gotten him a friend to help him be comfortable ages ago!

For long excursions where a bathroom might not be easily accessible or for overnights for a while, just until we're certain he'll be good without a reminder in the morning.  I have a feeling it won't be long at all before he's diaper free!  I'm looking forward to that day.

My youngest is really the only one still in diapers.  He just got to walking so I have a feeling it's going to be a little while before he's using the toilet.  I don't really believe in the little potty people will buy to teach their child to use the toilet.  In part, they're kind of gross to me.  I'd much rather just teach my children to use the toilet.  That means the baby can't learn until he's ready to climb on the step stool and sit down on the toilet.  I'm so happy to be back down to one again!

He Loves to Build!

My older son can be such a boy! I never realized how much of a difference there can be between boys and girls was so solidly ingrained in nature. I always thought a lot of that was nurture, but I'm starting to find between my own kids and my friend's kids, it seems more nature than anything else. I'm kind of surprised, but it's definitely not bad.

The current point of excitement is his new present. This is almost as good as the gears he got from his dad for Christmas.  He's been really excited about his Duplo as well.  His newest fascination is the FisherPrice Trio police set he got for his birthday.  It's so cute.  He calls them Legos.  It's become his newest obsession.

For him it's the perfect combination of building and something that will stay together well.  He hates to build something only to have it fall apart.  Things like these are just perfect for him.  They have the right combination of easy to use and sticking together.  He absolutely loves it.

It's made for a great day for my son.  He's had some awesome building time.  It's one of his favorite things to do!  Better still it's something that's encouraging his creativity.  We need more excuses for him to be creative these days!

The Best Birthday Present Ever!

My son's birthday was yesterday.  He was so excited at all the presents from his aunt and uncle.  Presents are always more fun when they come in the mail.  Both the older two have decided that presents from people they see every day are nice, but they've got nothing on the presents from people who live far away.  I hate to say it, but I'm inclined to agree.  There's really something enjoyable about getting stuff in the mail no matter what it is.

He didn't want to move on from his favorite present.  He opened it up and insisted that he wanted to play with it right away!  It was the best gift he'd ever gotten, something he'd wanted since Christmas.  He was overjoyed!

What was this present he wanted so badly?  It's a game called Uno Moo.  It's very similar to your traditional Uno game, but a lot less complicated.  Instead of cards it's animals of different colors and you need to match either color or type.  Each animal gets knocked into the barn as you play.  Farmers are your wild card and skunks make you draw two.  The rules are really that simple.  When you're down to one animal left you have to call out "uno moo!"  If anyone catches you if you don't, then you have to draw two animals from the barn.

The kids loved this game.  It's simple, easy, and something that doesn't take terribly long.  It's perfect for my son's attention span.  It's long enough for him to get into it, but short enough that he doesn't get distracted.  If he's feeling up to sitting for a while longer we can always do a second game when all is said and done.

He's been begging us for this game since he saw it at Christmas time.  His game from Santa was already planned at that point, so he wasn't going to get it for Christmas.  I'm thrilled that my aunt sent it for his birthday.  He's pretty excited about it too!  He's decided this is his favorite present this year!

We got a video of him thanking his aunt and uncle for this really cool present.  This is an experiment with PhotoBucket, so we're going to see what happens...