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January 25: Creations

January 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It was an easy morning – everything just seemed to flow…

Highlights of the Morning and Commute:

  • I woke up early and got myself ready. I made it upstairs by 7 AM to get the Twins up and also sit next to Twin Crazy on the potty, as promised. When I picked her up, her diaper was full so I knew it was too late. But we sat there anyway, and a teeny bit of pee came out – so we were all proud. Twin Husky was of course looking over with curiosity.
  • Red came in while we were in there and she was holding back a smile. She is proud too.
  • Downstairs, the clothes are already out in piles. Breakfast was cereal.
  • Twin Husky was strolling around his “tigers” again and also trying to maneuver with a baseball bat and ball. He is such a boy. So cute.
  • Twin Crazy was playing with stickers. She put some stickers on Big Bro’s backpack and he got very upset. He then suggested that she could put the stickers on his OLD backpack (Toy Story) so that worked fine for her. WAY TO GO BIG BRO!!! I love how these kids are empathetic and are actually becoming very good at problem solving and working through conflict. They continuously surprise me and make me proud (but of course there are times when their fights are too much to bear…. ).
  • I woke up Big Bro – who got to sleep WAY too late last night. This poor kid needs more sleep. I tried to coax him downstairs with the promise of apple juice and also the activity of packing up his backpack (which we received yesterday). That seemed to get him moving. He had a HUGE breakfast of banana yogurt with bananas. I went shopping yesterday (thankfully) so we have food in the house again.
  • Kids got dressed without a problem. Red was hoping like a bunny because of her bunny shirt.
  • Drop offs were so easy. I promised Big Bro that I would pick him up at 12:45 (after Kindergarten) since I have a 1/2 day today. I also promised Red that I would pick her up today after her nap. I want to spend some time with each of them today and take advantage of my short day. I miss them.

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    So, now I am on my couch, with a big pot of coffee after eating the kids’ leftover breakfast. I have chicken defrosted in the refrigerator already. I have to revise our proposal and I can maybe start to put out some planning calls for our conferences. I also have to start thinking about and preparing the communication language that will go out to invite potential clients to a “formation meeting” that we will have inbetween our conferences – for a potential forum that we are trying to build. Crafting this communication will be critical and I need to start thinking about the positioning, who to contact, and start those recruiting efforts….

    Highlights of My Working Day:

  • I had to address several emails this morning so got that taken care of.
  • I then had a 10 AM conference call to prepare for. It was an informative call.
  • I then focused on the proposal. I needed to price it down which meant cutting out scope. The trick is, you can’t cut too far – otherwise the client does not get a valuable piece of work, OR, your firm winds up investing extra time to MAKE it valuable but you don’t get paid for that time. Either scenario is not great. So I worked on price and reduced scope. I think we can do it.
  • I then got myself out of the house since it was my 1/2 day. I went to pick up Big Bro and felt the stress leave my body as soon as I saw him.

    • The Rest of the Day:

  • We talked about what we wanted to do for the day. We went to a garden at his school and sat on a bench. He couldn’t decide despite my various suggestions.
  • Then I got THE call. I needed to work on the proposal a bit more. So off we went, back at home. It only took me 15 minutes so that was good.
  • Big Bro was busy entertaining himself with Legos. He asked me to sit with him and build something. I gladly obliged. He is really good at Legos. He follows the directions, page by page, but he makes decisions as to what he wants to do and what he doesn’t. So he doesn’t follow the rule book to a T and in fact deviates based upon his own thinking. He also adds to it. Today, the space shuttle that he was working on actually turned into a space helicopter. And he wanted the man to sit on the helicopter and I suggested that maybe the man’s face was too close to the blade. So together we thought of a solution to extend the ship outwards in the back, and create a ledge where the man could safely sit. I loved that time with him, just us.
  • By that time, it was time to pick up Red (early). Her class was waking up from their naps. I packed some snacks and off we went to pick her up. She was happy to be “stolen” from her class early.
  • I took them to a place where you pick out pottery shapes and then paint them – the place then puts them in a kiln and you get them back all shiny. Big Bro picked out a tractor trailer and Red picked out an Angry Bird. They were so cute. I took too many pictures. I love looking at their faces as they are busy creating. They each picked out the colors they wanted from the palate of choices and picked out their different brushes. I had a blast watching them and I actually think the creations will come out really nice.
  • We then picked up Twin Crazy and Twin Husky early. I wanted them all home with me. We played for a bit and I did a lot of horsie-back rides. It is so cute to see all of the kids “in line” for their ride, and hearing “my turn” from the twins. So cute. They really did wait their turn and no-one tried to go out of order.
  • I then I started dinner and also did a ton of dishes. The kids were playing by themselves, which was working out OK but for some reason Big Bro was teasing EVERYBODY. It was so bad that I had to send him up to his room for some quiet time. He was much better afterwards.
  • Dinner was on the table shortly after 6 PM and I put Big Bro on chicken and string bean “duty” and Red on cous-cous “duty”. They loved having jobs. I think all kids really got into eating tonight because of it. They ate like champs. Twin Crazy went nuts with the cous-cous and was even stealing some off of Big Bro’s plate. Once a kid needed a refill, they asked the other child politely and then said “thank you”. I loved it. It was a really fun dinner.
  • After dinner I cleaned up a bit but then spent most of my time tickling the kids, wrestling with the girls, doing acrobatics with the girls. Big Bro was busy cleaning up all of the cous-cous. He was amazingly helpful and I think making up for his teasing episodes earlier in the day.
  • Bedtime was a breeze; Big Bro gave himself only a few magnets on his “responsibility board” since he knew he had some bad behavior today. His evaluation of his performance was right on track – I give him credit for that.

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    I have some personal reading to do and need to figure out a recipe for tomorrow.
    Til tomorrow,
    – Mama K

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