How I manage my time…

So, a mom with three young children recently asked me how I manage my time.  I may have covered that here before, but I thought my response to her would be worthwhile to post.

I guess my one tip is:  You can’t do everything.  You just can’t.  So, you pick and choose.  If a clean house is a high priority, then you probably won’t get that book read, or meet a friend for coffee, or take your kids to the park much. Or… whatever.  Or, if supplementing your family’s income is a super-high priority, then other things in your life will suffer. You just can’t do it all.

At least, you can’t do it all, all at once.  During the school year, I mostly keep to a “six weeks on, one week off” schedule, so for a week or two every six weeks, my house looks fabulous, because I get caught up on cleaning and special projects. The intervening time… not so great.

In general, I tend to do things in “seasons”.  Sometimes, I do really well at staying on top of ironing.  Sometimes, I get a lot of writing done.  Sometimes, I’m able to sneak out for lunch with a friend… but all of that and more seems to be in cycles.  I’m virtually never on top of EVERYTHING all at once.

It keeps me dependent on Jesus.  And it humbles me, because I would LIKE to stay perfectly on top of everything, but I’m just not able to.  That’s just not the season in my life, and part of that is because I have chosen it.  I’d have a lot more time to myself if all my kids were in school, or if I had fewer children, or if I didn’t serve in my church, or if I didn’t work so hard to have our family eat cheap AND healthy… but those are the choices I’ve made, and while I’m glad I make them, daily, it automatically means that other things are squeezed out.

Something that has also helped me in the past, and I think I’m going to do again, is a daily schedule of household tasks.  I’ve used Motivated Moms. They have a variety of schedules, all printable pdfs, to help you keep track of what should be done each day. It’s a bit of a struggle for me, because I NEVER get done all the schedule says that I “should” get done… and then I feel like a failure, but when I follow a schedule, I do get more done than when I don’t use one at all…

Freshman homeschooling angst

I love this!! from New Math by Craig Damrauer

I’m becoming more and more convinced that one of the major roles in parenting is to help children see the world in proper perspective:  to be more aware of others, to be aware of the potential results of personal actions, to discern what warrants a skeptical eye, to have a balanced view of self, to learn to look at things with God’s supernatural reality in mind and not just what presents itself as reality, etc.

My oldest son, Ethan, is 14 and has, four weeks into the school year, struggled with high school.  Not grade-wise;  he’s producing fine work.  Not with the content of his work;  he is enjoying what he’s learning.  It’s simply the volume of work, and how much it requires of his time and energy.

Our school day runs from 8:30 – 12:30.  If a reasonable amount of work is not accomplished in that time, I will often require that my children do the remainder of their work sometime in the afternoon, but my availability as a teacher is really limited after lunch;  they’re typically on their own for “homework” hours.  And, as I blogged briefly a couple of weeks ago, my approach for K-8 is very spiraling:  We cover topics repeatedly with increasing depth and complexity, so if one subject is not properly covered or grasped one week, or one month, or even one year, I don’t panic;  there’s always later.  That fairly relaxed attitude, combined with the fact that my children have done fabulously on standardized tests, has resulted in me really not having a rigorous approach to homework.

But… with high school, it’s different.  There are things that the state requires that my son learns (if I follow the track of high school diploma requirements — which is not actually necessary for homeschooled students where I live, but advisable).  And there are things that he needs to learn regardless of who is or is not requiring it.  And we can’t just catch up “next year.”  Our spiral is running out of room.  So, really, for the first time ever — other than math, which I’ve always insisted that they keep up on — I’m now communicating to Ethan, “If your stuff isn’t done in those four hours of ‘official’ school, you must get it done on your time.”

He’s having a really hard time with that, and feeling really, really, really, really overwhelmed, to the point where the entirety of his waking hours — from when his eyelids open in the morning to lights-out for the night — are heavy.  He hangs his head, he seems frequently on the verge of tears, he tends to pessimism, he’s on edge, he sighs incessantly, he needs lots of hugs (which is totally fine;  I’m thrilled that my 14 year old son wants hugs from me)…  Heavy.

I’ve told him that the mercy in me wants to just say, “Oh, it’s all right.  You don’t have to do it.”  However, I feel that it’s the right time to require him to manage his time, be consistent, persevere, work hard — even when he doesn’t want to, develop study skills, step up in responsibility, and any other number of practical skills and character traits that can be developed by hard work and persistence.

Plus, I just want him to learn.  I do, definitely, want him (and all my children) to enjoy school.  I want them to be excited about learning, and truly enjoy what they’re doing, and that desire daily factors into how we do school.  But, I would hate to look back on Ethan’s high school experience and know that my laxity as a teacher and a mother limited his options for college and/or career.  I don’t want to shortchange his education.

So, I’ve been pretty hardnosed about it.

Perhaps, though, I’ve been too hardnosed.

Yesterday morning, my husband Martin told me that the previous night (when I’d been out grocery shopping), he and Ethan had a heart-to-heart, and Ethan was pretty despondent about school, really feeling like he’s drowning and I don’t care.    Martin suggested that I pray about how to handle it, and that perhaps I needed to ease up.

I prayed…  Not a 40-day intense time of prayer and fasting, but not simply a, “God help me.  Thanks,” kind of prayer…  Somewhere in the middle.  Well, “somewhere in the middle,” but on the shorter side of the middle, because after fifteen minutes of prayer, I had some guidelines in my head for a bit of a different approach.  As I told Ethan later that morning, I wasn’t claiming that they were totally inspired by the Holy Spirit, but they might be!  I also asked him to give the new system two weeks to see if it helped.

In short, the new system is this:

• Maxing out his school day at 6 hours.  The four hours from 8:30 – 12:30, plus up to two hours of additional work in the afternoon and/or evening.
• Requiring that he does the ‘hard stuff’ first.

Knowing my son, part of his battle is that while reading is a great deal of his schoolwork, he so prefers to just read that he’ll consume his schoolbook of choice (often a novel) all morning, getting himself a week or two ahead of schedule on that book, yet he’s four days behind on math, and three days behind in science, and he still has that writing assignment from Monday that is due on Friday, and here it is Thursday and he hasn’t even started.  Etc.

And with all that behind-ness, he just feels like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.  There’s no end to the school day, and no chance — so it seems — of ever getting caught up.  The new system gives him clearer structure to order his time, and gives him hope that the day won’t perpetuate forever.

He is doing Apologia Physical Science; Teaching Textbooks Algebra I; P.E.*; and Sonlight’s Core 200, which covers Church History, Bible and Apologetics**, plus English (comprised of Writing, Vocabulary, and Literature).

So, now, I require that he starts the day with his choice of:

• Science
• Math
• Vocab
• Writing

Once those for subjects are completed, he can do the remainder of his work in any order, at his discretion:

• P.E.
• Bible Memory
• Reading — Literature
• Reading — History
• Reading — Bible & Apologetics

Ethan was pretty amenable to the plan, and felt cared-for, but still feeling overworked and somewhat distressed, and not convinced that it would have any effect on his schoolwork.

Well, at 3:30 p.m. that same day, he came back to me and said, “I’m all caught up.”  I replied, “That’s great!  You mean for the day?  It’s 3:30 and you’re done for the day?”  He clarified with a huge smile, “No.  I mean all caught up with all my assignments for the whole school year!”

Wow.  Awesome!

I was pretty giddy.  So was he.

I told him, “So… I guess last night was the dark before the dawn, eh?”

He looked blank.

“You’ve never heard that maxim?”

He hadn’t, so I explained.

I think this whole thing was a good experience for both of us.  For me, in that I still need to provide clear guidance and give him hope.  For him, that the work is doable, and that his emotions in a situation are not always a reliable indicator of reality.  Less than 24 hrs after feeling completely hopeless, the light was shining again, his face was beaming, and all of the despondency was behind him.

Now today, he’s in a new quandary, and dark clouds are again threatening.  But, I think we’ll get through this storm all right, too.

————————————-

*For P.E. (required by the state of Arizona for freshmen), Ethan is doing 20 minutes of activity four times weekly, and three times weekly, reading two pages of DK’s The Sports Book (which is a really engaging and well-illustrated book on how a wide variety of sports are played).

**Ethan is really enjoying Apologetics, to the surprise of us both.

Stuff that is interesting to me. :D And hopefully to you.

• For those of you curious — or even better, praying — my mom was moved yesterday to a rehabilitation hospital.  While there, she will receive 3+ daily hours of various kinds of therapy — occupational therapy, physical therapy, in addition to respiratory therapy and whatever else is deemed helpful.  So, her stay in the “normal” hospital was just under two weeks, which is better than pretty much everyone anticipated.  For those of you who are praying, please continue to do so, especially for my mother’s mind.  Her memory is shoddy, her processing very childlike, and while she knows she isn’t as sharp as she once was — and she once was VERY sharp! — it is quite an adjustment for both herself and those who love her.  We’re hoping that the general befuddlement is primarily caused by the abundance of meds she is taking, and not anything more permanent.
• This past spring, I checked out several books from the library on homeschooling high schoolers.  I read none of them.  I don’t even think I really flipped through any, not with anything resembling thoroughness.  I did get a printout from my local school district about graduation requirements, and have roughly — very roughly — mapped out a Plan of Action in my head.  And, I’m coming up with a more structured grading system for Ethan, my freshman.  None of this has been any kind of difficult.  It dawned on my yesterday, though, why homeschooling for high school can be so daunting:  There aren’t any do-overs.  I take a very spiraling approach:  We cover various topics repeatedly, with increasing complexity.  If my third grader doesn’t “get it”, who cares?  We have fourth, fifth, sixth… for him to learn.  Now that my oldest son is in 9th grade, though, I am really getting a sense of, “The buck stops here.”  We can’t pass on anything.  We can’t just say, “We’ll try again next semester.  Next year.  A couple-three years down the road.”  There are certain things he’s expected — and beyond that, things he needs — to learn for each year of high school, and if we run out of time at the end of the day, when do we make it up?  I still haven’t figured that out entirely.
• Motivated Moms.  I’ve been doing this scheduling system for a bit more than a month.  And while I have yet to actually accomplish in a week all that my schedule is telling me I’m to accomplish, I’m still getting way more done around the house than I had previously.  Not only has it produced a better organized and cleaner home, but having my daily list of things to do has nearly done away with that really debilitating feeling of, “I am barely keeping my nose above water!”  That alone makes it worth it.
• My garden is still producing really big plants that bear no fruit.  Or very little fruit.  Still…  I’m persisting, and hopefully, learning more, week by week.  I keep losing seedlings, though.  Here in the Phoenix area, September has been unseasonably, miserably hot (minus the last two days, which haven’t hit 100°, bless God); daily highs have been in the 105°-110° range.  This means that any seed that is directly sown into the garden needs to be moistened 4-5 times DAILY so that the sprout doesn’t die.  And, forget one time, or be away from home too long, and you lose your 15 linear feet of carrots.    So, I think I’ll hold off from seeding anything additional for another couple weeks.
• Taboo Crunchy Subjects.  Thank you, Mama Birth, for blogging my thoughts.  I don’t agree 100% with her assessments, but like her, I have noticed an increasing level of both fear and inflexible vociferousness in the supposedly touchy-feely natural-living/crunchy community.  It’s a bit disheartening, I must admit.  Personally, it is my goal to be a leader, to have some hills on which I’m willing to die, to have some moral absolutes, to learn from others’ mistakes and my own, to continually go “further up and further in“, YET NOT BE A JERK.  Even better than that, to be actually loving.  AND, to not be motivated by fear. (Which is a whole ‘nother topic in itself, and one on which I keep meaning to blog, but the whole subject would be such a huge one for me to tackle, I don’t know if I have the time or the emotional fortitude to do it justice.)  I don’t know if I’m achieving that balance, but it’s my goal.

Garden! Honey laundering! Motivated Moms! Obsessed with bread! New glasses! Hiking!

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  Rhubarb Chard from Seeds of Change

  I have carrots, green onions, broccoli, and red chard seeds planted in my garden.  I’ll be planting more of everything, plus lettuce and bulb onions, as space allows.  Still growing:  Mexican grey squash (I’ve eaten lots of them, raw, when they’re about 3″ long, right before they turn yellow and die); Yoeme purple string beans (tall and mostly green, but appears to be heat-stressed… some blooms… I’m waiting to see if the plants will do better as the weather cools);  basil (the only thing that’s really thriving;  we eat basil in stuff 4-5x/week now);  tomatoes (loads of blooms, but not really vigorous, strong plants… again, waiting until it cools to reassess);  hot red chile plants (healthy-looking, but small and no blooms).  I’m trying to decide what to do about my ginormous Hopi pumpkin plant.  It is literally spilling out of my raised bed… the squash plant is about 10′ x 4′, and it is taking up so much room that could be used for something else.  The plant appears to be thriving, with huge, green leaves and dozens of blossoms, and it would be a shame to rip out something so vigorous.  But, the pumpkins grow about 2-3″ big and then die, much like my Mexican grey squash.  My husband thinks it’s due to the heat and that I should give it some time.  I’m trying not to think about all the other, possibly more fruitful veggies I could plant in the space that dumb pumpkin is hogging.

• PLEASE READ this article on honey.  Please.  Who knew that honey was such a controversial topic??  It is imperative to your safety that you buy honey that is a product of the USA, or at least the western hemisphere.  Honey from China — tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals — is saturating the American market, because honey from China is banned in Europe.  “Some of the largest and most long-established U.S. honey packers are knowingly buying mislabeled, transshipped or possibly altered honey so they can sell it cheaper than those companies who demand safety, quality and rigorously inspected honey. … Almost 60 percent of what was imported – 123 million pounds – came from Asian countries – traditional laundering points for Chinese honey. This included 45 million pounds from India alone.”  HONEY SMUGGLING.  Who knew?
• 

  "Like" OSC on Facebook for new post updates, quick responses to any questions and comments, plus additional tidbits.

  Perhaps it’s too early to make a true judgement, but Motivated Moms seems to be working great.  It’s oddly helpful to be accountable to a sheet of paper which is waiting for me to tick the boxes.  The system is a real change for me, because instead of cleaning the bathroom in one fell swoop, it has you clean the toilet one day, the mirrors another day, the sink the following day, etc.  However, breaking each task into 2-to-20 minute segments makes each of them more do-able for me.  Plus, I find it difficult to disappear into my bedroom for an hour and a half to clean the master bath from lighting fixtures to tile;  I just don’t have that large chunk of time often enough, and I just can’t leave my kids unsupervised for that long.  But, pretty much everyone can function on their own if mom is only “gone” for 20 minute segments.  It’s just now noon, and I’ve already accomplished more than I would in an entire typical day.  Plus, I’ve gone on Facebook, done some gardening, made a loaf of bread, and busted a few heads.  Not really “busted”.  I’ve applied some mothering. 

• Speaking of bread, I’m an obsessed baker again.  I’m really motivated to find a recipe that WORKS, simply.  I have been making my Best Ever Gluten-Free Flour Mix for the last couple of months, consistently having it on hand to whip up some cupcakes or muffins or pancakes, and that has been wonderful and helpful.  Though it is a really versatile mix, I haven’t been able to successfully make sandwich bread with it, and I’m determined to come up with a bread recipe that will work using that flour mix.  Simple = sustainable.  I want to be able to daily (or nearly so) bake bread, and I know I won’t do it if I have to get out twenty billion ingredients, or remember a complicated process.  So far, the results are tasty, but too dense.  I’m tinkering with everything tinker-able — amount and kind of liquid, oven vs. breadmaker, amount of sugar and yeast, amount of rising time, etc.
• 

  They make me look hipper than I actually am.

  I got new glasses. 

• I went out hiking, early Saturday morning, with two friends, Cristi and Wendy.  It was the first time I hiked in about six weeks.  The hike wasn’t particularly strenuous, but it was good to just get out and get moving again.  What with the heat, a summer Bible study, my garden, our vacation, and simply getting out of the habit, my hiking went by the wayside.  I’m re-motivated now. 

Organized moms, unite! Just kidding. I’m not really organized, but I’m trying.

• This morning, I started a prayer journal.  I have journaled a LOT throughout my life, but I have never had a journal where each page is specifically devoted to one item I’m holding in prayer.  I think it’s going to take a couple of weeks just to write everything down!
• In other organizational news, I’m trying to become a Motivated Mom.  I paid $4 (half price) for the planner for 2011, choosing the daily full-page version, and printed it off yesterday (well, printed Aug 11 through the end of the year).  I have a love/hate relationship with lists.  I do get more done when I write out what I need to do, yet I feel cowed by all there is to do, and all I don’t get done by the end of the day.  This is someone else’s list, so maybe I’ll do better with that. 
• I updated my boys’ chore chart.  They each have daily chores, plus items that are done once or twice weekly, assigned for age-appropriateness and skill.   Click here for a PDF if you wanna see how I slave-drive my sons.  (For the record, Ethan is 14, Grant is 12, and Wesley is 9.)
• Last bit, not anything do do with being organized:  I have a friend from church who gives music lessons.  She can teach violin, flute, saxophone, clarinet, guitar, and keyboard/piano at her home or at yours.  (She can actually teach many more instruments, including brasses, but the six listed are her strongest suit.)  Her name is Leslie Herweg and her number is 616.566.0943.  That’s a Michigan cell phone number, but she is local to the Phoenix area.  43rd Avenue and Northern Ave area.  Her rates are $15 for a half-hour session with one child, or $25 for a session with two children. 

Frugal, healthy, (gluten-free — or not) groceries

A sweet friend of mine recently asked for frugal meal ideas.  Maybe she was asking for recipes, which I will list in a post later this week.  But to start out, I thought I’d post some general ideas — guidelines I use — to make it happen.  Feel free to add your own suggestions as a comment!

• Nothing from a mix, nothing from a box.  With rare exception — like boxed breakfast cereal — I simply don’t buy anything boxed or pre-mixed or frozen-prepared.  Not only is this virtually always more expensive, but ready-made foods are almost always going to contain ingredients that aren’t healthy.
• Stick to a budget. Don’t make excuses for yourself about why you’re not, or why you can’t.  YOU CAN.  Find a way!  Make it a game, a challenge.  First, if you don’t know how much you’re spending, figure that out by keeping track of receipts for a month.  Then, decrease that by 10% for a weekly or monthly budget and stick with it.  When you can easily shop at that decreased budget, decrease it by another 10%.  And so on.
• This is rather an extension of the first tip, but start with whole food, single ingredients.  As a gluten-free (and nearly dairy-free) family, I find that the hardest thing to make is often the carb in the meal.  So, I figure that out first:  Corn, rice, potatoes, or beans, or a combination of those items.
  • Corn might be cornbread, corn tortillas (either ready-made, or homemade from masa flour), or simply prepared-from-frozen (organic!  From Costco!) kernels.
  • Rice may be rice noodles (from the Asian market — about $1 per 10-16 oz package), plain basmati rice (Royal King Sella is our fave — bought in 10 lb bags, $11.99 at the Asian market), basmati rice mix (with bits of dried veggies from Trader Joe’s – about $2 for a 1 lb bag, which for us, is enough for about 1½ meals)
  • Since I avoid russets, my favorite thing to do is chunk up red and yellow potatoes, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with sea salt and herbs (usually dried parsley and/or thyme, or fresh rosemary), seal in a heavy-duty aluminum foil packet, and place it on the grill.  Alternately, put it in a covered casserole dish in the oven.
  • Beans:  Refried beans, or beans from canned — check your ingredients to make sure you don’t have any junk in your canned beans.  Calcium chloride is OK, though not ideal.  Anything other than salt is not.  I often will sautee onion and garlic to add to canned beans, or get even fancier, adding various veggies, corn, and tomatoes.  Or, start with bulk, dried beans.  I need to do more of this, actually!!  In my pantry, I have probably 15 pounds of dried pintos, lentils, black beans, etc., but I often don’t plan ahead far-enough in advance to allow for that.
  • If I deviate from my list, it is ONLY for something that is at a fabulous price.  Even if it’s for a snack or treat, like chocolate bars, I’ll buy a 3-pack at Trader Joe’s for $1.79.  Or, recently, I found an organic chocolate bar for $0.50, on clearance.  Yum!  AND, I’ll only buy “extras” if they don’t make me go over-budget, even if it is a great price!
• Know what a good price is for a grocery item, and don’t go over it.  Then, when that item goes on sale, buy in bulk.  Now, since I have limited pantry and freezer space, my “bulk” is typically not more than enough for a few weeks.  But, usually, when that “few weeks” is up, something else has gone on sale to replace it.
  • Meat:  I typically will not pay more than $2/lb for beef or boneless, skinless chicken breast.  I don’t pay more than $0.79/lb for other chicken.  I don’t pay more than $1.50/lb for pork.  Not more than $2/lb for any fish, and not more than $1.50/lb for turkey.  Accordingly, we never eat steaks.  Well, maybe once or twice a year.  I have to find more creative uses for more inexpensive cuts of meat, but I do!  I miss my rib eye, but it’s worth it.  Now, from what I understand, the Phoenix area — for some reason — is one of the least expensive places in the United States for groceries, so you may have to adjust yours up a bit.  But, still, be VERY choosy.  There are some weeks where I don’t buy any meat AT ALL, because it’s all too expensive, and we just live off of whatever I have in the freezer.
  • I don’t pay more than $2 for a box of “normal” cereal, and not more then $2.50 for gluten-free cereal.  This is accomplished through shopping the sales, using coupons, and buying in bulk.  For instance, this last shopping trip, I bought two “family size” boxes of Honey Bunches of Oats for $0.88 each.  I bought two big boxes of Rice Chex and Corn Chex for $1.50 each.  And, I bought a box of Gorilla Munch and a box of Koala Crisp for $2 each.
  • Do similarly for vegetables and fruit:  know what a good price is for canned, frozen, and fresh veggies and fruit.  We don’t eat a lot of canned veggies, but I do keep some on hand, and typically don’t pay more than $0.75 per can.  This winter, when so much of our nation’s fresh veggies were decimated by freakishly cold weather, we ate a lot of frozen peas, because those remained at a good price when fresh broccoli and zucchini shot up to $3+ per pound.  Much of this has to do with buying in season.  Don’t buy peaches in the winter when they are $3 a pound, even if they look good!  Wait until summertime!
• Use coupons.  Our local paper, the Arizona Republic, has a delivery special where we ONLY receive the Wednesday and Sunday papers.  Wednesday contains the weekly food ads, and Sunday’s paper includes manufacturer’s coupons.  As a very particular family, there is a GREAT deal that we simply cannot or won’t eat.  But, when I’m cutting coupons, I ask myself, “Would I buy this item if it was on sale AND I had this coupon?”  If the answer is yes, I clip and file it.  Using this method, even with special diets, I typically save $8-20/week in coupons.  While that wouldn’t qualify for “extreme couponing”, it makes it worthwhile to spend $2.25/week on our newspaper subscription and the 30 minutes or so, weekly, that I spend on coupons.  I have a small expandable file, to which I weekly add the new coupons.  I also go through it thoroughly, once a month, discarding expired coupons and reacquainting myself with what coupons I have.
• Use a list and stick to it.  I keep a running list which I update daily, as needed.  I just use a sheet of printer paper, folded over, which I keep on my countertop.  It is broken down by the store from which the needed items come:  General grocery, Sprouts (natural foods & produce market), Lee Lee (Asian market), Trader Joe’s, Costco, Target, and misc other stores (like Ross or the dollar store).
• Then, when I make my weekly shopping list, I use the food ads.
  • First, I peruse an ad to find out what’s on sale (a true, good sale), and add that to my shopping list for that store (I also break down my shopping list, per store, to sections — general grocery, produce, meat, deli, dairy, natural foods, etc.).  During that time, I also match coupons according to what’s on sale.
  • After I have determined what is on sale at what store, I then look at my list of items I need, and see if I have coupons for them.  If not, I place that item on my shopping list for whichever store has the best price for that item.  OR, I delay its purchase for a week or two and just do without.
• Plan your weekly menu based upon what is on sale!! Meal planning is a fabulous time-saver.  However, if you plan your menu not knowing what’s on sale, you’ll end up spending $5 per pound for that beef roast, thereby saving time, but spending a good $15+ more than you needed to.  Therefore, I decide what I will make that week after I see what is on sale.  I plan my menus a little more loosely:  “OK.  Chicken thighs are $0.49/lb.  We’ll have baked chicken thighs to go with the broccoli that’s on sale…  Pork shoulder is $0.99/lb.  We’ll have green chile pork in the Crockpot on Friday;  it can cook while we’re on errands and the library.  I can get ground pork for $1.29 and ground beef for $1.59/lb at Lee Lee;  we’ll have meat loaf, too.  That’s all the meat on sale… so I’ll take a package of boneless, skinless chicken breast from the freezer and make stir-fry on Monday…  I’ll need to pick up a few snow pea pods from Lee Lee, too.”  And so on.  That’s my “menu planning.”  Part of that is from cooking for my family for 16+ years;  I know what I can make, and cook almost exclusively from scratch.  When I use a recipe, it’s because I’m feeling a need for creativity, or I’ve found rutabagas on sale, and I need a rutabaga recipe.    I will seriously use recipes only about once every three weeks.  But, that’s not necessarily a budget-saver;  it’s because I have rough recipes already in my head, which I use to match what’s on sale with what I know I can make.
• This is more of a time-saver than budget-saver, but for each dinner, pick ONE time-consuming item to make, and make everything else easy.  For instance, my family loves corn bread.  But, that takes a while to mix up and bake.  So, if I make corn bread, you can bet we’ll be having grilled chicken (easy!  Sprinkle with Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute and a little sea salt, grill until done), steamed veggies (plain), and canned (all-natural) chili beans.  And so on.
• Make your own.  I make my own gluten-free baking mix.  I make my own trail mix.  I make my own gluten-free bread when I have time (which isn’t often, lately, so we just go without).  I bought a package of Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Quick Oats and have plans to make my own g.f. instant oatmeal packs, though I haven’t done it yet, using dried cranberries, cinnamon, brown sugar, and stevia.  When I make veggie dip, I make my own:  Plain sour cream or plain yogurt with sea salt, white pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, and herbs like thyme, dill, and parsley.  CHEAP.  EASY.  HEALTHY.  TASTY.  Don’t buy $2+/pack of “dip mix.”
• Use portion control or go without.
  • We do eat a few chips:  I often buy ONE large bag of tortilla chips and ONE bag of Kettle Chips from Costco.  I enforce portion control during lunch time, and almost never use chips as a snack.  I never let anyone (except my husband, who loves chips & salsa) just sit down with an open bag of chips.
  • I almost never buy “fruit snacks” or even fruit leather any more.  Fruit snacks are nothing more than corn syrup and food color (yuck — we haven’t eaten those for years!).  Healthy dried fruit snacks, even when bought in bulk, are at least 25-50¢ per serving.  A handful of raisins or even dried cranberries — even at $2.50/lb — are a LOT more cost-effective.
  • Virtually all gluten-free crackers are ridiculously expensive so I just never buy them.  I do, though, buy rice cakes (plain — Lundberg Farms is my fave brand) and Corn Thins.
  • Snacks are really the death-knell of a grocery budget.  Don’t buy ready-packaged snacks. JUST DON’T DO IT!!  EVER!!!  Make cookies from scratch and freeze half of them, or just have cookies once a week.  Let your kids make a jam sandwich for a snack.  Voila!  Cheap and easy.  (For my g.f. kids, it’s often a rice cake with jam or Trader Joe’s brand sunflower seed butter.)  Or, give them a piece of fruit.  We eat POUNDS AND POUNDS of fruit.  And carrots.  And other veggies.  It may seem expensive to buy loads of fresh produce, but it’s healthy, and it really is so much cheaper than packaged snacks.  Bananas:  15-20¢ each.  My local farmer’s market/natural foods store, Sprouts, will have oranges for 19¢ a pound 5-6 times a year.  Those weeks, I will literally buy 20 pounds of oranges (for four bucks!) — sometimes more! –  and each kid may have as many oranges as they like that week.    “Want a snack?  Have an orange.”  That’s about 5-7¢ per snack.
• Keep a well-organized, regularly cleaned-out pantry and fridge, both so you know what you have on hand, and so nothing goes to waste.
• And… so that you’re not spending all your time in the kitchen:  MAKE YOUR KIDS DO CHORES.  I am in a continual search of how to divest myself of chores.  I used to plan my meals around what was going to dirty the fewest pans.  Now that my 13yo nightly does the evening dishes, I find that I’m more ready to dirty and extra mixing bowl or saucepan, which many times, when cooking from scratch, you need to do!!!
• If you eat organic (which we try to), find the most cost-effective way to do so.  For instance, at Sprouts, you can purchase a 5-lb bag of carrots for $3.99.  I run through five pounds of carrots in 2-3 weeks, sometimes faster.  Put a kid to work peeling carrots, cut them into sticks, and put them in a container, covered with water.  They will keep, cut, for a week.  Voila!  A handful of organic carrot sticks for about 20¢ per serving — and a quarter pound of carrots is a LOT of carrots for a snack.
• Of course, if you live in a temperate climate, keep a kitchen garden!  At the VERY least, keep fresh herbs growing.
• Preserve food:  Learn to can!  (It’s not that hard.)  We always take homemade beef jerky on vacation (made in a borrowed dehydrator).  And, of course, freeze meat that you’ve found on sale.  (One note:  If you live in the desert, like we do, chest freezers — usually kept in the garage — such HUGE, HUGE, HUGE amounts of energy.  So, figure out what you’re spending on energy and don’t pat yourself on the back too hard if you save a few bucks on the food, then you go spend it, several times over, on energy costs.)
• (Edited to add:) Think yearly. In other words, ask yourself, “How much do I spend on this each year?”  You may be horrified to find out how much one little convenience is costing you, each year.  This isn’t actually groceries, but the first time my husband and I did a real budget, which was before we had kids, we were horrified to find that we were spending more than $2,000, annually, stopping for coffee and pastries each morning.  This leads to the next point:
• (Edited to add:) If perfection is not possible, settle for improvement, as a step toward your goal.  My husband is a coffee snob, and though we agreed that we couldn’t continue with our $7-8 morning trips to Hava Java, but neither could we make the downward leap to morning MJB, either.  So, we compromised by buying high-quality beans and real half & half, to prepare at home.  About 15 years later, I’m still in a continual search for inexpensive-yet-high-quality coffee beans (I don’t spend more than $6/lb for them!).  With the amount of coffee we drink, we still spend about $550 each year on coffee and cream.  This still seems like a huge amount of money to spend on coffee, which is really a non-essential.  However, this is at least an improvement.  Or perhaps you feel like you simply must have a steak.  Well, then, make sure you’re buying that New York strip on sale for $4-5 a pound.  If you must have it fresh, keep it down to one expensive home-cooked meal per week (or even one a month) and do that in lieu of eating out.  Or, stock up when your favorite cut of beef is on sale, and put it in the freezer.  Or, make yourself a trade-off:  “We currently eat out two meals a week.  It’s important for me to have healthy, convenient snacks for my kids which cost an arm and a leg.  So, instead of eating out twice per week, we’ll eat out once, and use that $30 to add to the grocery budget specifically for snacks.”  And so on.  Just always be aiming for improvement.

I’m sure many of you have additional tips.  Please leave them below!!

Balancing the busy season

There’s a fine line, sometimes, between being refreshingly honest and complaining.  I sincerely hope I’m the former.

I really don’t like to be busy.  I don’t know if it’s that, at heart, I’m naturally lazy (I hope not), or that really, my best “work” is not that which requires activity.  I don’t know.  But, anticipating seasons like the one upon which I’m embarking can, if I let it, really stress me out and rob my joy.

I look upon this past spring and wonder how I survived.  On top of homeschooling and church, we had Little League (usually four nights a week), two weekly small groups (one for my husband, and one for me), plus a bi-weekly homeschooling art class, and a homeschooling group on the off-weeks.  Plus, all the activities and tasks which allow a family and home to function.  And an ill mother and the puzzle of my youngest daughter’s diet and health.

Fiala's current fave

Seasons like that necessitate that I be highly structured and organized, with which I have a love/hate relationship.  I get a lot done when my life is highly structured, but it…  I don’t know.  I just don’t like it.  I miss the freedom, and the opportunity to, say, respond to that little pleading, upturned face, and just sit down on the kitchen floor in the midst of dinner prep and read The Shy Little Kitten to my youngest, without the pressure of knowing what it’s going to do to our schedule, should dinner be 15 minutes late.

But, weathering this past spring gives me the courage — literally — to say, “OK.  We can do two small groups, and it’s going to be all right.  I will live and not die.”

That sounds so stupid and melodramatic, but it’s true.

My life is full of good things and blessings.  It really is.  And, it has been my observation that the enemy takes evil delight in taking our blessings and framing them – just so — in our minds so that they appear to be a detriment of one sort or another.  At least, I’m vulnerable to that:  I’m tempted to see the dark cloud behind every silver lining.  And, that’s not good.  Still, neither do I want to be dishonest and say, “I can do everything!  And it all makes me happy!  And it’s easy!  Being stretched is fun!”  Because, truly, even with all the good things in my life, sometimes it just seems like there’s too much of… something, and what I’d really rather be doing is putting my back against a shady tree beside a small stream, and reading a book with one eye, and with my other, watching my kids play.  And there’s too little of that, and too much of the other, and, frankly, I’ve not yet learned what the balance is between seeking Godly peace, and simply being lazy and self-serving and yearning for the idyllic.

Also, I’m taking into consideration:

• This week is my youngest son’s 9th birthday.  We have a day-long outing scheduled (with a couple of other families), and an overnighter with two of Wesley’s friends.  (Obligingly, another friend of mine has offered to keep my older two boys overnight with her oldest son, thus there is no net gain of children.)
• This week, we do start the small group/kinship season again, which, in many ways, is always so wonderful.  I’m truly glad, each week, when I look into the faces of those in group with me, and I hear the teaching — which frequently is just what I needed to hear — and I participate in discussion, and ministry, and even leading worship (which I really, really love)…  I so often think, “I am so pleased to be able to be here.”  Yet, the logistics of making it happen can nearly tip me over the edge.  One weekly night, my husband stays home with our dear passel of children, and on another night, I stay home while he does the same thing at his group.  Each scenario has its challenges.
• This week, we started having my parents back over for dinner.  For literally a decade, my mother and stepdad have been coming over for a weekly dinner.  But, this past year saw a dramatic decrease in that, both because of me being distraught over Fiala’s health and how to feed her (I’m not distressed over that anymore, but she still is difficult to feed, and I have adjusted myself to making two meals, every mealtime)… and my mother’s health has been in serious decline, with three major hospital stays over the last year.  My mother and I also had a row a couple of months ago, our first in years and years, the end of which had her proclaiming that she never wanted to talk with me again.  That was distressing.  My stepdad and I came to the conclusion that it was her ill health “talking”, which is so odd, because my mother has forever been resolute and reasonable.  It’s very unlike her to be changeable and petulant.  But, bless God for that, because after sending me a few peace offerings (which is also unlike her) of a number of gluten-free grocery/convenience items, plus a good book, she asked if we couldn’t, please, start our dinners back up.  HOW COULD I SAY NO??!?? I couldn’t.  I can’t!  I don’t want to.  I dearly want to spend that time with my parents.  Dearly.  Yet, it’s one more thing on the plate, so to speak.  This Monday, just my stepdad came over, as my mother is in Illinois with her mother.  Same with this coming Monday.  After that, it will be the two of them, but only once every other week.
• And, literally weighing on me is the fact that I’ve put on 25 lbs since January, and am now back to my pre-pregnancy (before Fiala) weight.  That’s not a good thing.  I am very uncomfortable with myself, literally, yet after a year+ of living on a hyper-restricted diet for her sake, it’s hard to Just Say No to chocolate chips.    But, I have decided that I have to do something so the weight doesn’t keep piling on, and that’s difficult, because I’m not a dieter, yet I’m aware that I simply can’t stay the way I am right now.  I haven’t yet figured out exactly what I’m going to do.
• And, I’m in the midst of… distilling… choosing… seeking some wisdom from my Father… about some direction for my life for the next couple of years (at least)… and it’s unclear…  I’ve been meaning to fast, but I keep forgetting!  After about five solid years of either being pregnant or nursing, I got out of the habit.  Now, it’s like, “OK.  I need to fast.  Monday.  No, that won’t work.  Parents over for dinner.  OK.  Tuesday.  Tuesday it is!” then Tuesday happens and I forget until mid-morning after two cups of coffee, a banana, some almonds, and a bowl of granola.  Etc.  So, I need to figure that out, too. 

And other stuff.

I really just need God.  I need His presence, I need His peace, His wisdom, His priorities, His heart, even His energy…

I closed another recent post with this same thing, but it is so on my heart:

Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge!  How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!  For who can know the Lord’s thoughts?  Who knows enough to give him advice?  And who has given him so much that he needs to pay it back?  For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.  Romans 11:33-36 NLT

Slowly preparing for school

I was going to start school on the 23rd of August, the same 23rd that has already come and gone.  Historically, I start to obsess about curriculum and plans for each school year, oh, in March, if not sooner.  But, I tell ya, for better or worse, having my boys take the Iowa Test back in May, and having them do so well, has really mellowed me out.  I’m not panicking about their educational future.  That said, I don’t want to be so relaxed that I lose all focus…

Mostly because of the book I’m ghostwriting, I was just not ready for school on the 23rd.  But, that’s done with, for now, until we get some edits back, when more changes/additions will have to be done.  It went to the publisher on Monday…

This week, I have been doing a little bit of placement-testing, and ordering of materials.

My biggest joy has been over Wesley.  He has been my slowest learner:  Literally, this past school year was the first one — at third grade, age eight — that he could consistently remember how to spell his whole first and last name.  He also had a terrible time with handwriting.  Evidence is showing though, that perhaps he is/was a slow starter, and not necessarily having a hard time learning in general:

• His composite ITBS grade equivalency was 4.7, nearly a year advanced.
• I decided to switch him to Teaching Textbooks (switching over from Singapore) this school year, and he got a near-perfect score on the 4th grade placement test, so I had him take the 5th grade one, and on the first section, he got 14/15, and on the second section, he scored an 8/15.  (He needed a 10/15 and an 8/15 to pass.)  Some people say that TT is easier than many homeschooling math curricula, and that their children routinely place higher than their grade level.  Still, this has NEVER happened with Wesley, and I’m so proud of him.  We have been celebrating his success all week.
• Last year, as Wesley was literally unable to spell rule-following three-letter words, I didn’t even attempt to place him for spelling.  We simply worked a LOT on phonics, sight-spelling, and pronunciation. (He has some auditory processing issues — if you don’t hear a word correctly, you won’t say it correctly, and you certainly won’t spell it correctly.  Wes has particular trouble discerning soft vowel sounds.)  With the spelling issue and with handwriting trouble, Wes was one to two years behind on virtually every aspect of English.  Today, I did a Spelling Power placement test with him, and he scored at 3rd grade 5th month.  I was SO VERY encouraged by this!!  You have no idea how amazing it is to me to have him only be a half-year behind in spelling.  He correctly spelled words like going, paths, and fish, stumbling on words like picked, dollar, and when.  In one year, progressing from, “Mom, how do you spell my name?” to spelling paths, is, in my opinion, a HUGE leap.

I haven’t finished spelling with Ethan and Grant — we did the first 25 of 50 words this morning, and they both haven’t had a misspelled word yet.  For math, Grant, who is in 6th grade, qualified for 8th-grade Pre-Algebra, which was unsurprising, as he did Math 7 last year.  Ethan got a near-perfect score on the Pre-Algebra placement test, which would lead me to believe that he could successfully navigate Algebra in this, his 8th grade year.  But, he doesn’t want to, and I’m fine with that.  He’d rather grow and stretch gradually, rather than jumping ahead at every opportunity;  he’s cautious in general.  And, I’ve seen him, before, get over his head in math, and it’s not pleasant for either of us.  So, I completely support his desire to take the easier path.

And, today, I sorted through the homeschooling closet, putting away last year’s workbooks and folders and notebooks, and otherwise getting things in order.

Audrey, who turned four in April, wants to do school.  We’ll pick up in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons — she’s completed 40 of them or so.  And, I found some occupational therapy-related stuff that I’ll probably do with her…  Not that she needs OT;  just to work on fine and gross motor stuff, and so that she can feel like she’s doing something. 

I’ll be trying Easy Grammar for the first time this year.  I’m going to do Easy Grammar 4 with Wesley and Easy Grammar Plus with both Grant and Ethan.  We’ll see how that works.  I have done Rod & Staff in the past, but I’m finding that a tad too… pedantic.  Yet, I don’t want to drop parts of speech altogether, which many current English Grammar currics now do.  I’m hoping Easy Grammar is a happy medium.  From what I understand, Easy Grammar starts with having the student memorize all the prepositions to assist in ID’ing the other parts of speech, and to help break down sentence structure.  I think that is a good approach.

We’re also slowly working our way through Sonlight Cores.  Ethan and Grant are weeks away from finishing Core 4, and Wesley has a bit yet to go in Core 2.  Once Wes is ready for Core 3, I’ll have Grant jump back down to doing school with Wes, since I had him skip Core 3 earlier, in order to join up with Ethan.  (If that made sense to you, I congratulate you;  you must be trying to combine schoolwork with a passel of your own!)  In general, Grant is always a challenge for me:  book-smart, but without the maturity required for more advanced reasoning and focused learning and working.  So, I have him jump back and forth between working with his younger brother, and working Ethan, who is two years older.

OK!  That’s it for now.  Must run, as my little one, Fiala, is waking. 

One of those days

One of those days:

• I started my day with Beth Moore and Queen Esther.  Good stuff.
• I repaired an old bookcase with a nail, a staple gun, some wood screws and a power drill!
• I mounted the book case on the upper shelf in the (very tall) the closet of my oldest son, Ethan, attaching it to the wall.
• I cleaned out Ethan”s closet which also has all of the wrapping paper & giftbags in it, as well as all of our school and art supplies (though there is some sorting still to do in the school stuff).
• I mounted a cork board — with a level and everything! — on Ethan’s wall so he no longer has to put up odds and ends with tacky/adhesive/silly putty-like stuff (forgot the name).
• I put a bunch of things on Freecycle, as part of my my perpetual bid to clean out and de-clutter my home.

Still feels like I got nothing done.

The circle of life, and other things inbetween

Quite a lofty-sounding title for a bullet-point summary of things, lately.

• My sweet friend Annie had her baby yesterday afternoon.  She was 10 days past her due date.  As she had been having prodromal labor with back labor for about 48 hours, contracting every 10-30 minutes.   I had a similar situation with my first (though as he was 2 weeks early, I didn’t realize it was “real” labor).  This absolutely exhausted her, so she agreed to be induced on Wednesday night.  However, as the hospital delayed in calling her in, she actually went spontaneously into labor on her own, so by the time she got to the hospital at about 3 a.m. on Thursday morning, she’d been having steady contractions — down to 2-3 minutes apart — for five hours.  But, as she had not really slept at all for three nights, and had been having back/prodromal labor for 50+ hours, I had compassion on her desire to have an epidural — when in labor with my first, I could handle the contractions, but my back hurt SO BADLY that I very nearly got anesthesia just because of that.  Annie herself had intended to have a natural delivery, and I was *SO* excited to take part in that, but, ah well.  Even though she ended up with a epidural (and pitocin), her Bishop’s Score was 10, so I was confident that labor was going to progress well.  Labor did slow down once the meds were administered.  She was “stuck” at 4 cm for about 5 1/2 hours.  Then, the doctor broke her water, which, again, I’m normally not a fan of.  But, it was what she needed, due to the circumstances.  She dilated the remaining 6 cm in less than 3 hours, and 3 1/2 hours after the AROM, she had a baby!!  She pushed like a champ (she had quite a bit of mobility and sensation, even with the epidural);  it took about 10 pushes and less than 30 minutes to deliver her 8 lb 1 oz baby boy, just shy of 12 hours after arriving in the hospital.  Minus the first 30 minutes or so, I was there with her the whole time, and felt very privileged to be present.  I was SO PUMPED after the baby was born…   (BTW, neither my first son, nor Annie’s baby boy were posterior, which is frequently the cause of back labor.)
• A friend and brother in Christ lost his mother a few days ago.  She was a member of our church, too.  She had suffered a long, disabling illness…  Hearing reports from our friend about the time of death, and some visions he had in the middle of the night of his mom with Jesus…  it’s hard to describe how his words have impacted me.  There was a lot of peace and beauty, and my heart swells to think of her worshiping Jesus, free and strong in His presence.
• Today is the last day of school for my kids for the summer.  I am looking forward to a number of projects, including cleaning out every corner of every room in the house, as if we were moving, though we have no plans to.  Having been in this house for nearly five years, there are some things that have just piled up, and become very disorderly.  I realized that, prior to this home, our family’s moving every 2-3 years was an involuntary purging that was actually quite valuable!  So, now I feel a GREAT NEED to do a voluntary purging.
• I just ordered my first book of the prerequisite reading for becoming a DONA doula, unsurprisingly entitled The Doula Book.  I also revisited the DONA website for an overview of all the requirements to become a doula.  The process is more involved than I had remembered.  I was thinking I needed simply to read 4-5 books and attend one weekend workshop, then attend/observe a few births, and take a certification test…  turns out there’s more to it than that.  I’m not as concerned about the time involved;  if it takes me an additional 6 months or even a year to become certified, I’m OK with that.  I am, though, rather worried about the cost;  it’s going to end up being several hundred dollars more than I realized…. though I guess if that’s spread out over an additional year, it won’t be such a drain on our tight budget. 
• Last night was the best Little League game I’ve ever seen.  It was so exciting!  Of course, I probably wouldn’t feel nearly as happy about it if my son’s team would have lost…  It was the 2nd game in a double-elimination playoff.  Ethan’s team was seeded 2nd of 8 teams.  We played the 3rd seed last night, after both of the teams had won their first playoff game.  Our team, the Diamondbacks, led 1-0, then the other team, the Cubs, rallied and scored two, so that they led, coming into the bottom of the 6th and final inning.  My son Ethan, who actually has had a very tough year, came up to bat with two outs and nobody on.  He faced a pitcher who threw three straight balls.  The opposing coach switched pitchers, and the new pitcher threw his first pitch, which was also a ball:  Ethan walked.  He stole 2nd.  Then, his teammate who was at the plate got a hit, which advanced Ethan to 3rd.  So, runners on first & third, two outs.  The next batter faced THREE pitchers, as the Cubs’ coach kept pulling his pitchers as soon as they threw a ball.  The pitcher threw a pitch — it was a ball, a wild pitch.  As the catcher scrambled for the ball, the pitcher ran up to cover home plate.  Ethan ran like crazy, executed a perfect slide, and when the cloud of dust cleared, the umpire signaled that he was safe, scoring the tying run.  Everyone erupted in whoops and hollers and Ethan got a lot of thwacks on his helmet for a job well done, and had a grin a mile wide.  After that, the batter struck out, inning over.  Normally, Little League games end at a maximum of six innings, even if there is a tie.  But, I guess during playoffs, they go into extra innings.  We got three quick outs on the Cubs in the top of the 7th.  In the bottom, we got two boys on, first and third, with no outs.  Our best hitter came up to bat, and the opposing coach decided to intentionally walk him, which I don’t recall ever seeing in Little League.  However, on what would have been ball 4, the batter rrreeeeeeeached way out over the plate and just made contact with the ball, which plunked it into shallow center.  The ball was caught for an out by the center fielder.  However, our guy on third — who, incidentally, was at the very bottom of the order and had a stellar hit himself to even GET himself on base — tagged up and scored in another crazy, dust-cloud-obscured play at the plate.  The ump declared him safe which scored the winning run.  Everyone erupted into even greater cheers, and the players all mobbed the boy who scored the winning run…  My throat ached from cheering.  It was sweet.  What was all the more remarkable to me was that it truly was a team effort, and that when our star pitcher was unable to keep the other team from scoring (a mere two runs, but still, enough so that we were losing), it was the bottom of the order — the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th batters who contributed significantly towards the win, with Ethan being the 9th in the order.  (There are actually 13 guys on the team, but one player wasn’t there for some reason.)  In Little League, the coach can play any player at any position in any inning — though pitchers have to pitch consecutive innings and cannot return to the mound once they leave — and though he can limit the players’ time defensively, and bench players for 2 or 3 innings (Ethan himself only played 4 of the 7 innings, defensively), all the batters bat all the way through the order.  The “star” players did really well, but it thrilled my heart that the not-so-stellar players, my son included, were genuinely significant in the win.
• In semi-related news, throughout the regular 22-game season, Ethan’s coach kept a clear plastic jar in the dugout, and when a player made a fabulous play, Coach would write the boy’s name and a note about what he did.  Many of the boys had 4, 5, 6 clothespins in there.  Ethan had ONE.  One.  For a 2-RBI hit in a clutch situation.  After the last practice, Coach pulled clothespins out to award various prizes.  All of them were nice:  most were autographed sports memorabilia.  But the biggest prize was an iPod Touch, which had been donated by one of the team’s sponsors.  Well… guess who won the iPod Touch???  Mmhm.  So cool.  One of the other parents whispered to my husband, “I was praying that Ethan would win that!!!”  Ethan is the sort of boy you root for, even when he doesn’t do great.  He has a great attitude, and he tries hard.  Of course, I’m biased.    Ethan said, “My iPod is the most advanced piece of technology in our whole house.”  I think he’s right.