Adventures in Parenting

DH went back to work this week so I've been on my own. Yesterday wasn't anything too traumatic, just gymnastics and I'm used to that being a zoo. Today, however, I ventured out to both the grocery store and the library. Yeehaw, that was interesting. The grocery store wasn't too bad - the kids actually behaved - but I forgot to bring my baby sling so I had to put Greyson in the cart seat, Linus in his infant car seat carrier in the main part of the basket, and then had to ask Cameron and Cassia to push one of those little kid carts so we had somewhere to put the groceries! LOL. I know I'm going to end up being that mom who has to push three carts through the store each week to feed all her teenage boys. They were actually pretty well behaved in the library too, but it felt really zooish. I think I messed my back up carrying the infant carrier in one hand and Greyson on my other hip across the street. And then trying to keep track of them all while I was checking out the books? Yikes. Someday I'll get the hang of it, I'm sure. (I hope, lol.)

But we did have another productive school day, even though we didn't get started until almost 12:30. Cameron read a chapter from Frog and Toad All Year. Cassia chose not to do any phonics or reading today. For grammar we learned about adjectives. It was kind of funny, one part of the lesson gave a list of adjectives and asked them to name nouns that those adjectives could describe. Hot, cold, long, short, cute, fuzzy, etc. Cameron did really well (although he kept saying "Linus" for almost all of them, lol) but Cassia seemed to struggle a bit thinking of things. Another part of the lesson asked them to come up with all the adjectives they could for a certain noun. I picked the noun "Linus" thinking that would be easy since we had already used him for a number of adjectives. Cassia came up with several right off the bat but Cameron found it almost impossible to come up with a single adjective. He could only manage to think of descriptive clauses like "has a small nose" or "has lots of hair" or "cries a lot." I had to help him turn them around into words like "hairy" and "tearful." I just thought it was interesting that one struggled with the nouns and one struggled with the adjectives.

For math, Cameron learned about adding fractions to make a whole. (e.g. 3/5 + ___ = 1) He got a little confused at first, saying things like "3/5 + 1/2 = 1 whole" but got the hang of it pretty quickly. Cassia did some more subtraction and made a cute little bunny calculator where a hungry bunny on an envelope gobbles up carrots on an index card.

We finished up with history and read about the Mauryan Empire of India and Emperor Asoka who renounced the act of war after seeing how it made his people suffer. We also read a Buddhist story from the Jataka Tales about a hare, an otter, a jackal, and a monkey. (In looking that up in Wikipedia, I noticed that it seems to be spelled incorrectly in SOTW. They have it written "Jakata" Tales.) Cassia was so impressed by the ending in which the hare tried to sacrifice himself in a fire to feed a hungry traveler only to find that the traveler was really a disguised god and the fire did not harm him, that she decided to draw a picture of it. It's quite a good picture, but unfortunately, our scanner does not seem to be working at the moment. She wanted to give it to the librarian but I convinced her that we should keep it in her History Notebook* instead. I had great last minute luck at the library and came home with an armload of other Jataka Tales and a colorful and simple book on Buddhists.

I had wanted to do science today too, but we really did need to get to the store and the library before soccer. Oh yes, I had to take all four kids to soccer too. I met an elderly man there who had been laughing at Greyson and was admiring the baby. He said in his heavily accented English, "Two boys?" and I said, "No. Three boys, one girl." He looked startled for a minute and seemed to count on his fingers a bit before finally looking up and saying, "Now that's a family!" Now, I thought the previous generations were used to larger families! He looked at me like I had said twelve kids, lol. So that was my final adventure for the day. The good news is that Greyson cooperated and actually walked back to the car when it was time to leave instead of making me carry him and that Cameron and Cassia both pitched in and carried the camp chairs so that I didn't have to make two trips. I really do think we all may get the hang of this eventually. :)

*OMG, I have been so horrible at getting anything for the History Notebooks! Ideally, we should have drawings and maps and narrations for every chapter we've read but I haven't put anything in there for months. If anything, all I have is a random pile of maps and coloring pages stuffed in a drawer somewhere waiting to be scanned, sorted, and hole punched. I hated feeling tied to having to do written stuff so we'd have proof that we studied X, but I also hate having huge gaps in the stuff I do have because I love the idea of ending up with a self-made history book. A clear case of being damned if you do and damned if you don't.

First Day of Fall Quarter

First day trying to get back into a routine and it worked great! Well, ok, my grandiose plans about trying to work a cleaning schedule back into our lives hasn't quite manifested itself yet but I'm working on it. We did get school done though.

Cameron read a Pixar Little Golden Book, Mater and the Ghost Light and then Cassia read Road to Reading's Cat Hat. It was a bit above her (I really, really HATE how "level 1" books are never really appropriate for beginning readers) but she pushed her way through, with my help, and was able to actually read at least half of the words. At one point I even offered to read the rest for her but she declined, wanting to do it all by herself. I like that. :)

Next we did Grammar/Language/Writing. I decided to finally take on the FLL lesson on dictation with Cameron, so first I set up Cassia with a copywork sentence from the book she had just read. Ralph was a happy cat hat. She did great with it. Her only flaw was writing all of her "a"s in capital. She attempted the lower case ones several times, but finally gave up and went with the capitals. So she knows the right way to do it, she just found it too hard this time and I'm totally cool with that. For Cameron, I dictated the sentence, "March is a windy month." We discussed how a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark. We discussed how you determine which punctuation mark to use. He was sure he wouldn't be able to do it at first, but we sounded the words out together and he did great. I had to help a lot with the spelling of "month" but other than that he did perfectly.

Math was next and Cameron did several pages on comparing fractions. He is a natural with them and had no problem conceptualizing the fact that the fraction with the bigger number on the bottom is actually the smaller fraction. It totally made sense to him. Cassia did several pages on visualizing the subtraction process by crossing out balloons or vases to be "taken away." She did great too, except for writing a lot of her numbers backwards. I think it's a left-handed thing for her.

That was the end of our official school day because then it was gymnastics time. Nothing special went on there except a few temper tantrums from the napless one and lots of mothers ooohing and aaaahing over Linus. I did have a moment or two when, with a babe in arms, a child in class, and two in the play area, I wondered how I had ever thought three kids was a lot. LOL, I remember when one kid seemed like a lot to manage! Funny how we adapt.

Anyway, schooling with a newborn is not so tough. That two-year old is getting more and more challenging by the day but in not too long he will be a three year old and then he will be four and I'll have a different two year old to deal with! And then one day they will be gone and I know I will be longing for those quirky little temperaments again. I met a mother of four/grandmother of eight a few months back who said that she found that four children were plenty... and then she paused and said, "but once they are grown, you never had enough of them." I can totally see that being true. I'm already having those pangs, knowing this is our last. So I am cherishing every moment with my sweet young newborn and trying to appreciate every moment I have with all of my little miracles because I know they are only mine to borrow and time will move too fast...

Ramblings from the edge

(Which reminds me, I've been meaning to read Postcards From the Edge for years now. I should request that from the library.)

Don't worry, I'm not teetering on the brink of anything... except maybe a routine. DH is going back to work next week and will even be out of town for most of the next two weeks but I think I'll be ok. I'm feeling good. Linus is a complete angel. Here, I took this today...

...have you ever seen such an adorable pile of mush and baby chub??

I just had some random thoughts clunking around my head and felt like blogging. :) School for the last two weeks has been what I would call "School Lite." Cameron has been reading a chapter a day from a Frog and Toad book. We have both Frog and Toad Are Friends and Frog and Toad All Year from the library and he likes alternating between the two. I can't get over what great books they are and how much we are all enjoying them. For math he's been playing Timez Attack. And that "counts" as school work so that he can play video games. It's hard enough trying to keep up some sort of school routine with DH around, much less a newborn, but this is working. Next week though, I think we'll officially start the Fall Quarter. LOL, I didn't even realize that Fall was upon us until we were a couple days into the season. But that's ok. I don't think anyone will notice if we start a week late.

I was thinking about our fall quarter yesterday and I really think I want to make a big effort to study Classical Composers. I was listening to our local classical station and realized that I really do have a general sense of certain composer's styles simply from listening to Beethoven's Wig. If we made an effort - and put to use the $25 a year I'm spending on Classical Archives - then I'm sure it would be no time at all before we were all pretty Classically literate. We could easily read a composer's biography on Friday mornings, before park, and then listen to his works on the way to Favorite Park Day. What a simple way that would be to study! I know we're also going to be seeing many ballets and plays this year as well. In fact, we just watched The Royal Ballet's production of Swan Lake on DVD this morning. I was really surprised that Cassia watched the entire two hours of it in one sitting. Greyson was pretty into it too. Cameron, well, not so much but he did watch the end. Luckily we all already knew the story from watching Barbie of Swan Lake so many times.

There were some other things floating around my head that I wanted to share, but I can't seem to remember them at the moment and Cameron is wanting to play Tri-Ominos. I think I might hear Linus fussing in the other room too. He has the quietest little cry. It's so hard to hear him. :) I might post again later. Ciao, friends.

Love is...

Forgive my absence. I've been a little busy/distracted. :)

Please welcome Linus Morgan "Blobby" Berm. (He's still pretty blobbish, lol.) He rushed into the world at 7:53pm on Monday, September 15, 2008. He weighed 8 lbs 5 oz and was 19 inches long. He has a nice little head of reddish-brown hair and eyes that will likely turn brown within the month. If you "know" me well enough to know my favorite homeschooling board, you can find a link to the birth story and pictures there. Otherwise, you'll have to be satisfied with these...

Happy Due Date to me!

Well there we go, today is the day. Looks like little Blobby has decided to be just like his brothers and sister and remain warm and cozy inside for as long as possible. But that's ok. I think I'm finally ready. I just got all the baby clothes put away yesterday, lol. Oh wait, I still need to rearrange the changing table to fit both newborn and Greyson size diapers on there. (Have I mentioned that after completely mastering the potty, Greyson decided he was no longer interested and went totally back to diapers?? Ugh.) Now it's time to just wait and wonder. I actually love this part best. I made it to the due date. It really is going to be any day now!

We never made it to the Jelly Belly Factory on Wednesday. Cassia woke up feeling sick. It wasn't anything serious, just a stuffy nose, light cough, and then one brief case of throwing up a tiny bit of "icky water" but I didn't want to risk her getting carsick on the drive over. DH was working at home so we left her there watching Mermaidia and the rest of us went on a quick trip to Mrs. Grossman's for sticker grab bags to make her feel better. She was a little disappointed that she couldn't come too, but the giant mass of stickers did the trick. Cameron read her a story, but that was the extent of schoolwork. He had asked to do some (ok he asked if he could play video games anyway) but the books were in Grandma C's room and she was taking a (very LONG) nap after the excursion.

Thursday Cameron woke up feeling not so well. His feel better movie of choice was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, lol. Then the kids spent the rest of the morning playing card games with Grandma. I took Cassia to ballet in the early afternoon and spent a very nice hour just sitting and reading. When we got home and Greyson went down for his nap, Cameron was feeling better so Grandma C took C&C (lots of Cs in our family, lol) out shoe shopping and I got to spend yet another nice quiet hour reading. And then they still weren't home so I went ahead and rearranged dresser contents so I could put baby clothes away.

Today is Favorite Park Day. I promised our park friends that the only way we would miss would be if something miraculous happened last night. Well, it didn't, lol. As far as the kids that are already here... Cassia seems to be all better, just a slightly stuffy nose, and Cameron, well, I think a decongestant will do wonders for him. It's one of those tough decisions where on one hand, I don't want to keep them home because they really need to get out but on the other hand, I certainly don't want anyone sick. I already warned them that if anyone is sick then they can't visit NewBaby in the hospital and I really don't want to bring a newborn home to a house of sickies either. So hopefully, this congestion thing will stay mild and Blobby will hold out a few more days until all the germies have moved on.

Reinforcements have arrived!

Reinforcements have arrived!! I am infinitely more relaxed. There is SOMEONE ELSE to entertain the munchkins. There is SOMEONE ELSE to do the dishes. There is SOMEONE ELSE to say "No, don't do that" or "Here, let me help." There is SOMEONE ELSE to watch the kids while I go to the doctor or on errands. There is SOMEONE ELSE. *phew!*

So, here I am, blogging my morning away while my blueberry-cherry muffins finish baking. *sigh* Bliss. Actually, this is why my MIL keeps delaying her arrival with each child because she sees how productive I become once she arrives and then doesn't think that I need her. I should just get in the habit of sending her video of how pathetic I am before she arrives, lol. Actually, this time we failed miserably at getting the house cleaned up before she got here. I got the bathroom clean and the kitchen tolerable, but the rest of the house was still trashed. Oh well, she didn't run away and she's actually been helping to keep all the crap off the floor which is where my complete and utter failure has shown itself. You know, it's hard to pick up when you can't bend over. ;)

Anyway, um, homeschool... yeah, that's what we're blogging about, right? I last left you last Wednesday after a super productive couple of days. Thursday was the polar opposite of that, lol. We did do schoolwork on Thursday and Cameron read the first chapter of Frog and Toad Are Friends (he does love that book, BTW) and we did math and a few pages of science. Then we went to ballet and Greyson screamed pretty much the entire time. And then we went to Our Neighborhood Park Day which just restarted for the "fall" at a new time/day. This park day used to be on Wednesday which is generally our "do nothing" day so we rarely went. I love having at least one day a week where we just don't leave the house. Anyway, now that it overlaps with ballet class, I think we might stop by on our way home occasionally. But it was about 105˚ last Thursday and there is NO shade at this particular park. It was so bad that even the kids started asking to leave after an hour. The rest of the day was, understandably, shot.

Friday was Favorite Park Day and there are lots of big shady oak trees and a nice breeze there. It was hot, but it was bearable. So the adults hunkered down in the shade next to the snack table and the kids hunkered down in the shade in the sand box and we happily enjoyed the official restarting of Favorite Park Day with a snack and craft project potluck. When what to my wondering eyes should appear, but several reusable canvas bags full of toys and baby clothes and baby blankets and aromatherapy sprays and bath salts and handmade chocolates and dairy-free snacks for Greyson and crayons and coloring books... and love. Yes, my Favorite Friends at Favorite Park Day conspired with our 4-H friends to throw me a surprise baby shower. :) And not just baby stuff, but stuff to keep the other kids occupied to give me and the new little one a bit of peace once he arrives. It was so wonderful and so touching. *sniff sniff* It definitely goes up there with one of the best days of my life. I've never had such a circle of friends. I am honored and blessed to be a part of such an amazing community.

The weekend was spent with DH finishing up Cassia's room. It's beautiful. I should go take a picture (while it's still clean, lol) but that would require getting up. ;) One wall is covered in bookshelves and looks SOoooooo much better than all the random cheapy Home Depot bookcases that used to hold our school books. Her little white desk has become Cameron's favorite place to do math. Her bed has become our favorite place to read. It's a haven for us all.

I spent the weekend finishing up the family rosters for our homeschool group. Wow, that was a project. Thankfully, DH took pity on me and stayed up late one night stuffing them all with their ridiculous number of fliers, folding, and sealing them. All 160 of them.

Monday, MIL finally arrived. We spent the morning attempting to clean up and she arrived just in time to head out for gymnastics. I left her there with the kiddos and went to the post office to mail out the rosters. Yikes, I had to put stamps on those puppies by hand! Why did I think they would have an automated thing to do it for me?? At least I didn't have to lick the stamps. (OK, please tell me everyone remembers having to lick stamps, right? I'm not that old, am I?) After the gym, we headed right out to soccer. DH met us there and stayed with C&C while Grandma and Greyson went home for a nap and I headed to the grocery store. You seriously need one parent for each child, I think. Oh how I resent our nuclear family society at times!! MIL can't move near us though because all of her DH's family lives near them (including his 90-something year old mother!) and won't let them leave. Oh well. Hopefully we will be able to be there for our children... and hopefully they will want us to be.

Tuesday the kids spent most of the morning just enjoying having Grandma C around. Cameron and Cassia and I left about noon for the first 4-H meeting of the year. It felt strange being there and not having to chase Grey around, lol. Cameron and Cassia both got to be Sergeants at Arms and help carry in the flags and lead the Pledge of Allegiance. They were pretty proud. It was a good meeting and the kids signed up for cooking, historical crafts, origami, geocaching, and puppetry. Well, I don't know if they would have voluntarily signed up for puppetry or not, but since I'm leading it, they're taking it. ;) There were lots of new families this year and several of them were pretty big families too! I think there were two or three new families with three or four kids around the same age as mine. It should be a fun year.

When we got home, Cameron read Grandma C a chapter of Frog and Toad for school. She was suitably impressed with his reading and he and Cassia were just rolling laughing over the story. Next was Cassia's turn to impress and she read Grandma C "her" Ant book. Grandma was actually really surprised and impressed with her ability and I was glowing with pride. I especially had to throw in the fact that Cassia's schooling is totally optional and I've never forced her to do anything she doesn't want to. (Their cousin H, who is also 5, just started Kindergarten this year and hates it already.) While Cassia read, Cameron went into her room and did his math. He's still working on matching up fractional pictures with the fraction numbers. He loves fractions and thinks they're super easy. Gotta love that. I hope that attitude sticks around. The "boring" 4-H meeting (which actually wasn't too boring at all this time!) counted as the other subject today. I suppose if I had to name it I'd call it Social Studies. It really is a study of government and speech and leadership and citizenship as well as all the cool things that you learn during the projects. Have I mentioned that I love 4-H? ;)

Today, now that we've all gorged ourselves on freshly baked muffins, we're going to head out to the Jelly Belly Factory for a tour today. We didn't have anything on the schedule today and MIL had never been there... so why not? Sorry for the crazy-long post again. I'll try to blog again before another week passes me by.

Love to all. :)

Productivity!!

Yee-haw!! I've had the most productive last couple of days. I am SO relieved. I don't know if it's just my nesting instinct finally kicking in or if it's my birth numerology moving from 10, Wheel of Fortune (lots of change and ups and downs) to 11, Karma or Justice (where you reap what you sow), as my friend Karin predicts. I was complaining a couple weeks ago about feeling so out of control and so incredibly in need of a change and she reassured me that as soon as my birthday passed I would feel a change and most likely move into a period of strength. Seems to be true and regardless the reason, I'll take it!

So to recap... Friday was Favorite Park Day. We didn't do any blackberry picking like we had planned (partly because Cassia had lost her sandals and then refused to put on any other pair of shoes *eye roll*) but spent most of the afternoon learning a Spanish card game. Cameron loved that game and wanted to keep playing round after round after round, lol.

We left the park a bit early because we had plans to go to an Unschooler's Game Night and Potluck that evening. I had been wanting to go for months but since DH is usually only home for dinner 3 nights a week, we had never made it. This week, however, DH wasn't going to be home until close to 10pm so we decided to go. C&C were so excited. They LOVE board games and card games and the thought of having a room full of games to play and kids to play them with was truly exciting. We brought Hungry, Hungry Hippos, Tangoes, and SkipBo and a big bowl of homemade refried beans. Unfortunately though, none of the other kids seemed to want to play any games. Dinner wasn't served until about 8pm and then the adults settled down to a game of Trivial Pursuit and the kids disappeared into one of the bedrooms around a computer. Computer and electronic games were supposed to be strictly off limits at this gathering, but (forgive my stereotypes) the Unschooling Nature of the group seemed to prevent any of the parents from telling their kids not to. I knew my kids actually wanted to play games so I pulled them away from the computer and played a round of SkipBo with them. And then we left. Don't get me wrong, it's not that we had a bad time. We had a good time - it just didn't quite live up to our expectations of a Game Night.

The weekend was spent finishing up Cassia's new room. It looks fabulous. We have her brand new big girl bed in there complete with purple walls, pink and purple butterfly sheets, a floor lamp in 5 different shades of pink, white shelving along one wall, and what was supposed to be their school desk that is now the perfect accessory to the girliest of girly-girl rooms. She loves it. I love it. I wonder if she'll let me move in too. ;)

Monday was my birthday. I am that much closer to 40 now - yikes. LOL. Funny, I remember 28 being a lot harder than 29 or 30 and it seems that 38 is the same way. I think it's that once you hit that x8 you can no longer say you're mid-twenties or mid-thirties. Oh yeah, I'm late thirties now. And barefoot and pregnant too, lol. We didn't do anything special really. Just hung out around the house and then went out to dinner. It was a nice day.

Tuesday, get ready, we actually did schoolwork. Cassia finished up a review page in phonics on CVC words with the five short vowel sounds. She did FABULOUSLY. I had been worried that she was just memorizing the words after I read them the first time and then couldn't recall them later, but this time she really seemed to "get" the sounding it out thing. Cameron finally FINISHED the very last phonics lesson. WooHooo!!! We got through it. The whole book. Yay!! Next I decided to skip Grammar because the lesson was about introducing dictation and I just don't think Cameron is quite ready for that. I think I'll wait a week or so for him to get comfortable reading small sentences again before I make him start writing them. For math, Cassia did some more adding and Cameron started an introduction to fractions. We finished off with Science and read all about lungs and gills. There was a cool activity for measuring lung capacity but unfortunately I didn't have all the parts for it. I need a rubber tube. Where do you get a rubber tube?? I looked online for something else fun to do, but there were surprisingly few suitable unit study ideas for the respiratory system.

We finished off the day with haircuts and gymnastics. It was about 500 degrees in the gym so that pretty much finished off my productivity too. I met yet another mother of four also. It's funny how they're all coming out of the woodwork now! It seems that having four kids is almost commonplace around here now. Well, not really, but it does seem that three is the oddball number - people either have one or two or just jump straight to four!

Today was another good day. I started off with an OB appointment. Everything is good. I'm much less uncomfortable now, for some reason, and am content to just wait until Junior decides to make his appearance - though I do appreciate the repeated offers to induce from my OB. She just keeps saying that everything looks great and so she'll go along with whatever I want to do. Oh and I'm still anemic, but not as badly so that probably has something to do with my energy level too. DH was working from home today so since he was home with the kids, I decided to stop off at the library on my way home. I paid my $9.40 fine (ouch!) and picked up a book for everyone. I got Cameron Frog and Toad Are Friends, Cassia An Ant: Learning the Short A Sound, and Calling All Engines for Greyson. Cameron said, "Oh, I bet I'll like this book!" and then tossed it aside, lol. Greyson jumped right in squealing, "Tommy! Tommy!" and spent about 15 minutes flipping through the pictures in his Thomas book. Cassia, after looking slightly strangely at me for getting her a book on ants, sat down and read the entire thing cover to cover. She did SO good. I was so proud. She had some problems remembering the word "an" but I think it was because she didn't really realize that it was a word, you know? I don't think she ever listened to herself closely enough to realize that she say "an umbrella" rather than "a umbrella" so I can see how it would be hard to read. She could read the words "ant" and "can" just fine so it was just some silly mental block, but oh well. She worked hard sounding things out and really, really did a fabulous job. I am so happy that I got that book for her. For me, I got Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife to get me "in the mood" so to speak. I wanted to get one of Ina May Gaskin's books but they were all checked out.

After lunch we... get ready... did school again! Yes, you read that right - two days in a row! And the best part is that everyone was super, super cooperative and wonderful about it. Cassia voluntarily did a phonics lesson even after spending all that time reading her ant book. I totally said she could skip it if she wanted but she wanted to surge ahead. The lesson was on double consonants and she piped up with "Hey, I read a word in my ant book that had that. Well, it wasn't like that but it was two with the same sound!" and she was right. She had read the word "black" in her book. She's a smart little cookie. Cameron put up a bit of a fuss when I asked him to go get his library book to read for school. So then I told him it didn't matter what he read as long as he grabbed something to read. He finally came back with a WALL-E Little Golden Book and read it well. It turns out that I was right about him. He seemed to really need the closure of finishing all the phonics lessons before he could have the confidence to believe that he could read. It's been coming on for a few weeks now - ever since we started that final section of the book - but now it seems complete. He read "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and now he can read anything. ;) For math, Cassia started on subtraction by counting backwards on a number line. Cameron named fractions from pictures, as in, "1/5 is 1 part of 5 equal parts" and he even did all the reading in his math book too. For History we read about the caste system in Ancient India and about the young prince, Siddhartha, who became Buddha. I'd really like to go a little deeper into Buddhism with the kids. If I *had* to choose a religion, I think I would choose that one. I went over a couple of the principles with Cameron, like reincarnation, and he informed me that he is starting to believe in ghosts and gods - especially ghosts. I think he might be ready to really start understanding what religion means to people.

The ironic thing about today is that school was done in Cassia's room. Yes, when that room was The School Room we never did school in there. It was just too cluttered and crowded and stiff. Now that it's all purple and comfy (and all DH's computers are out of there), it seems to be the ideal place to get a little quiet and hunker down with a good book, lol. A lesson in irony at its best.

The only thing left on our schedule today is a soccer game this evening. It is so nice to have everything done and out of the way early. I really hope this trend continues. Maybe I can even get the house clean and the baby's stuff ready before he arrives. *grin*