Rambling Randomness

Delaina is now 9 weeks old.  Hard to imagine that it’s been 9 weeks already!  She’s grown so much, though, and has such a sweet temperament.  She has smiles for everyone she sees and even calms for Brianna, Lynae, and Kristopher now.  She’s not a big fan of being put down, but who can blame her?  I’m pretty sure she’s not figured out that she’s the 9th child quite yet, because she still makes demands as if she’s the one and only.  Honestly, that’s quite all right with us :).  There’s enough Mom and Dad to go around for all 9 of the kids!

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School is going great.  I’ve not used the school room every day, but when we’re doing whole group activities it’s great, and when we need to be secluded away from the distractions of the house, or a few of us are working and some are in the other room, it works great!

I’ve made a document that has a list of skills that I want each of the kids to be able to accomplish.  It has a list of 50+ household and community items I want them to be able to identify.  It also has directional phrases I want them to be able to take oral and/or signed directions to accomplish and to do so successfully.  Lastly it has positional terms, like on, under, in.  My social skills for the kids is that they will be able to take those oral directions and pair them with the identified and named objects to follow directions.  I’ve spent a lot of time working on these skills with Micah, James, Emma, and Aleksa especially, and with the vocabulary building with Wesley as well. 

Of course we’re doing academic subjects too- working on colors, shapes, letters, numbers, etc. with these five, and working on reading, phonics, sight words, spelling, addition, subtraction, spatial terms, etc. with Lynae and Brianna.

We’re working around doctor’s appointments at the moment, and that comes a few times a year when we have clumps of appointments.  Thankfully those aren’t every week like they are this week and next!

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Aleksa’s behavior overall has improved drastically after we decided to go ahead with medication for her.  I am amazed at the sweet and pleasant little girl she is becoming as she has been able to control her impulses more (when the meds are active anyway) and to stop and think about directions given.  We have had very firm boundaries with her as far as spaces she is allowed to be without asking within our home (excluding the play room because she couldn’t control herself in there) and now she has frequently been able to ask to go play in there and been appropriate for quite a length of time without me standing in there with her.  That’s a huge accomplishment for her!

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We hadn’t used James’ tube from Thursday until Monday except for meds because he actually ate everything he needs to have in a day orally.  That ended Monday.  I’m thankful for the g-tube, to not have to ‘fight’ with him to eat or take meds.  It also appears to be like a long lost friend to him.  He must not mind it because he really hasn’t cared that it’s there!

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We figured out how to be able to replace the microwave.  Though I’ve had more offers for people’s old microwaves then I could have imagined! We are very thankful for so many friends willing to loan or give us their microwaves!  I’m also slightly curious if most of our town thinks that I cannot survive without a microwave?? :)

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I went to Aldi’s on Sunday on a whim.  I had been in a few weeks prior when I needed just a few things and was pleasantly surprised with the cost of my groceries from there.  This time I had a much longer list and was really glad to see that almost everything that I needed I was able to purchase there! 

While I was out after getting flu-shots on Monday I stopped in at Publix and picked up the three things I couldn’t get at Aldi’s: a pot roast, bananas (theirs were green), and slow cooker lining bags.  If you’ve never tried the slow cooker bags, they are well worth it to me.  I hate scraping baked-on yuck out of the ceramic part of the crock pot!

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Monday I decided to COOK.  I needed food for the rest of the week and had a busy week ahead, so that was my opportunity.  I started the pot roast in the slow cooker around lunch time and by dinner it was cooked and able to be pulled for pulled beef.

I took the cooker liner out of the crock pot and put in two cans of sloppy joe sauce and 3 lbs of hamburger and let that start cooking.  I also put a huge $5 pizza from Aldi’s in the oven and that served the kids and I while Michael was at a meeting on Monday night.

I now have served the family dinner tonight and also have enough for a dinner then a lunch of sloppy joes as well as a night of pulled beef sandwiches.

I’ll be making a breakfast casserole using a ham steak that I bought at Aldi’s this week and 18 eggs as well as some shredded cheese, salt, and pepper, for dinner one night.  I’ll sneak in some shredded up spinach as well.  They can’t pick it out of eggs :).